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Trump's own intelligence officials contradict his repeated claims of mail-in voting fraud

July 31, 2020. Summarized by summa-bot.

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House, Thursday, July 30, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

US intelligence officials on Friday discounted the possibility of foreign countries mass producing fake ballots to interfere in the November elections, contradicting President Donald Trump's continued insistence that mail-in voting poses a significant threat to election security.

Washington (CNN)US intelligence officials on Friday discounted the possibility of foreign countries mass producing fake ballots to interfere in the November elections, contradicting President Donald Trump's continued insistence that mail-in voting poses a significant threat to election security.

Officials dismissed the possibility of foreign powers being able to interfere on a mass scale to produce and send fake ballots to voters and election authorities, a source said.

The President is so vocal in his distrust of voting by mail that there are concerns among intelligence and law enforcement officials that he is laying the groundwork for the exact sort of foreign disinformation campaigns they warn about.

In a July 24 statement on election threats with 100 days to go before November 3, Evanina made no mention of mail-in ballots.

"The diversity of election systems among the states, multiple checks and redundancies in those systems, and post-election auditing all make it extraordinarily difficult for foreign adversaries to broadly disrupt or change vote tallies without detection," Evanina said in his statement.

But in unclassified calls with members of the committee over the past few months, Krebs has not brought up his concerns about foreign countries using fraudulent mail-in ballots, a Democratic aide on the committee said.

"We have not had documented cases in any number of presidential elections about forged mail-in ballots or forged ballots," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who attended a Thursday election security briefing.

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