Exclusive: US to accuse Russia of sustained effort to influence 2024 election

This is CNN breaking news, and we are following breaking news just in to CNN. The Biden administration is expected to accuse Russia of a sustained effort to influence the 2024 election. CNN's Evan Perez has more on this. Exclusive reporting is just coming in to CNN. Evan, what can you tell us? Well, Jim, this is an effort by the Biden administration to get ahead of what the Russians are allegedly doing ahead of this 2024 election. And so, you know, sources have told Sean Lingus and Kylie Atwood, Zach Cohen and me that this is really the most significant effort by the Biden administration to sort of call this out. We've seen Russia Today, which is now called RT. We've seen some of their activity that the Justice Department has called out. For instance. they said that there was a Russia Today employee who was running about 1000 social media accounts that were were essentially used to sort of divide Americans trying to, propelled some of the division that we already see on social media. And so what we expect today from the judge, from the, the Biden administration, State Department, Treasury, Justice Department, we expect that they're going to call out the Russians for what is a persistent effort that they believe is directed at influencing the 2024 election and voters this year, they're also going to call out, a company called or an organization called the Social Design Agency, which, the Justice Department and the, the, the, the Treasury Department has already sanctioned, for running, social media accounts, and websites in Europe. So their activity is also going to be called out as part of this. Now, you know, sort of just take a step back. obviously we're coming down to the last few months of the of the presidential campaign, and this is the time where you see a lot of activity from the Russians, from, it's something in some aspects from the Chinese and also from the Iranians. We've heard a lot from, from the administration recently about the Iranians trying to essentially pit Americans against each other, trying to sow chaos by trying to hack the, the Biden-Harris campaign, as well as successfully breaching the Trump campaign. So that activity is all, part of what is going on this year. We're expecting to see, Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI director, Chris Wray. later this afternoon, they have a meeting of the, election threats Task Force Jim. And we're expected to hear a lot more about the activity that they believe the Russians and some of these other countries have been added. But today, certainly the the attention, the large part of the attention is going to be on this Russian effort, which is again centered on art, which, which is, formally known as Russia Today, in which the, the, the U.S. government has forced, to register as a foreign agent inside the United States. Jim and Evan, I mean, obviously, we know from the 2016 campaign that the Russians, attempted to influence, the presidential election, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee concluded all of this to try to help, Donald Trump in that race against Hillary Clinton. What do we know about what the goals are, what the aims are this time around, and how might the tools be a little bit different? Well, the you know, some of the tools are very similar to what they did in 2016, Jim. Or we've seen certainly the use of these bots of these accounts, these fake accounts on social media. It's very similar to what the Russians did in 2016, where they went on Facebook, tried to organize, events where Americans essentially could be pinned against each other. that was what was happening back in 2016. The goal then, according to the intelligence community, was obviously to help Donald Trump. But secondarily, it was to sort of sow chaos and to try to get Americans to be more divided. And and you can see some of the fruits of that, obviously, you know, I think, you know, online you can see Americans being pitted against each other. Some of that is happening naturally. But also you have to call into question whether some of this is being driven by foreign forces. And so we don't know what the intent of the Russians are. Certainly I at this point, we don't we might hear more from the attorney general and the FBI director. Whether the intelligence community has concluded, that they have a favorite in this, in the 2024 election. But we also can see what the Russians have been saying, which is to criticize, the Biden administration for the conduct of the war in Ukraine and so on. Jim. Right. And as we know, throughout this campaign, former President Trump has made it clear, that, he has a very different view when it comes to, how the U.S should be supporting Ukraine against, in that war against Russia. and, Evan, I guess the other question that I have about all of this is it sounds as though, there were the Russians just haven't really learned their lesson, from the 2016 cycle, and they're just sort of up to their old tricks. I mean, it just sounds like there hasn't been much of a deterrent to stop this behavior. I mean, I think I would say I would take the opposite view, which is that they have learned those lessons. Actually, they've learned that for spending just a few, you know, thousands of dollars, they can have more impact than spending millions and billions of dollars on fighter jets. And, on aircraft carriers. Right? I mean, that's one of the things that the Russians learned from 2016 is that they could have a lot more impact with just using social media to sow chaos in the U.S. election system. You can see, some of the effects of that, the fact that you have a lot a big portion of the electorate that distrust the election system in this country, some of it being driven by, by former President Donald Trump. So that, I think, is what they've learned. Interesting. All right. So they have been emboldened. that's exactly right. To to a large extent. Evan. Ari, stand by, if you can. CNN legal and national security analyst Carrie Cordero joins me now. Carrie, I do want to ask you about this, breaking news that Evan was just laying out that the Biden administration is about to come out and accused Russia of trying to, carry out a sustained effort to influence the upcoming election. what are your thoughts on this? I suppose this isn't this shouldn't come as a major surprise, but it is notable that the Biden administration is going to come out and make this accusation. Yeah, I think the fact that they're making a big public statement about it, and that they're really previewing how much they're going to lay out, is important, because as we know, if we just go back, we are now, you know, at least eight years into understanding the sustained nature of foreign attempts to influence the election, Russia in particular. And so we go back to 2016. The US was really caught flat footed. 2020 individuals within the national security apparatus made a big effort to educate the public, particularly coming from the intelligence community, coming from the cyber unit within the Department of Homeland Security. So there was an effort within government, to warn about particular efforts from Russia also to a lesser degree, China and Iran. So this is really important. I think we are getting close to the election. And so in order for the public to have an understanding of how they might be on the receiving end of information that is out in the world, out in the digital space, is really important. And so I'll be looking more for what, what specifically they're going to communicate. And that's that's a very important point, Carrie, that the public needs to know that if they're looking on social media and they're seeing things from suspicious sources, that, who knows, it could be a Russian disinformation campaign. It could be bots that the Russians are putting out there to try to sow those divisions. As Evan was talking about. That's right. I mean, there was we know if we if we go back and look at what they tried to do in 2016, there was a huge online component. but sometimes that online component even translated into trying to affect the behavior of Americans in the physical world. And so I'm curious to understand more about what the administration is saying about this, current effort, how much of it is in the virtual space, how much of it do they think actually could be trying to, create physical spaces, protest type things, activity where Americans are pitted against each other? Yeah. And we're just being flooded with disinformation now on social media. So it stands to reason that some of this is going to be, fueled by the Russians. the Biden administration is going to be making this accusation. We understand later today. It is focused on R.T., the Russian state media network, that has been accused essentially of being a propaganda arm, of the Kremlin