Susan Rice: I’m 100% Convinced Russia Will Interfere in 2020 Elections

Susan Rice believes Russia will interfere in the 2020 presidential election and suggested the country may be doing so already. This would be consistent with the findings of the intelligence community.

The former National Security Advisor told a Washington Post virtual event that  Russia remained a threat to American democracy following its interference in 2016.

“I almost never say this, but [I am] 100 percent convinced that Russia is doing much of what it did in 2016 and certainly more,” Rice said.

“We need to be worried not only about Russian disinformation — its activity on social media which is constant, aimed at misleading and dividing and instilling fear and hatred between and among Americans,” she went on.

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

“But we need to be concerned also about what efforts it might make again to infiltrate our voting systems, and corrupt either our voting rolls or even potentially the voting count itself.”

“That’s very hard to do, and hopefully in the intervening years, even more steps have been taken to harden our system, I believe in many cases that’s the case, but I also think the Russians aren’t going to stop trying,” Rice said.

Rice also took aim at Republicans who’ve tried to downplay the Russian issue in the wake of a bipartisan Senate report outlining ties between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence.

“It’s not just the Russians, it’s not just the Trump campaign and those involved with it, it’s also at least a handful of Republicans in the Senate who seem to be willing to sully themselves with Russian propaganda in order to advantage Donald Trump again in this election,” she said.

Follow Darragh Roche on Twitter

Darragh Roche

Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media