Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has spurred an investigation into evidence that spy agencies tried to conceal U.S. election vulnerabilities, including whistle-blower claims that a CIA officer was asked to alter evidence of China meddling and that President Donald Trump and Congress were intentionally kept in the dark about concerns involving China and Venezuela, according to unclassified memos reviewed by Just the News.

The memos indicate Gabbard's team first learned about the evidence — much of it yet classified — last year as part of a review conducted by her now-disbanded Director's Initiative Group (DIG) and recently referred it to the new Intelligence Community (IC) Inspector General Christopher Fox, a move that could eventually lead to the public gaining access to declassified versions of some of the evidence.

Foreign interference efforts by China were de-emphasized as far back as 2020

The wide-ranging approach taken by the FBI in response to now-debunked claims of Trump-Russia collusion in 2016 stands in stark contrast to how the U.S. intelligence community sought to bury evidence of Chinese government efforts to undermine Trump’s candidacy in 2020.

The National Intelligence Council concluded in 2020 that China had hacked or gained access to several state voter registration databases, but that information was hidden from the American public, state election officials, and Congress. The new memos reviewed by Just the News cite evidence that China may have gained access to between 12 and 18 states' voter registration databases in 2020 alone, an infiltration far larger than previously acknowledged.

They also chronicle efforts to suppress the extent of China's malicious election activities despite whistle-blower complaints from Christopher Porter — the now-former national intelligence officer for cyber — trying to bring attention to it. Just the News recently reported that Fox, the current intel community watchdog, is reviewing Porter’s whistle-blower concerns anew, including evidence of possible retaliation during the Biden years.

The ODNI is currently in possession of allegations made by one or more intelligence officers arguing that foreign interference efforts by China were de-emphasized or omitted entirely from final analytic assessments, kept out of the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB, or hidden from congressional oversight, according to documents reviewed by Just the News. 

These actions within the IC were taken in an alleged effort to undercut Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and resist his China-related policies, according to the memos reviewed by Just the News.

One email in the possession of ODNI allegedly states that an intelligence agency planned to massage one particular presidential briefing document meant for Trump to dodge the mention of election influence concerns despite raw intelligence reporting on the subject.

The memos also point to emails showing alleged attempts by certain CIA officials to cover up election influence efforts by China and to push a CIA analyst to change a federal record about an agency meeting where CIA officials purportedly hinted that China-related evidence was being held back to avoid helping Trump in the 2020 race.

The memos also chronicle concerns about the handling of congressional briefings on foreign interference and Chinese interference attempts in 2020. The warnings raised and then purportedly suppressed inside the IC in 2020 also included concerns about vulnerabilities tied to Venezuela-linked election infrastructure, the documents state.

Months before the 2020 presidential election, U.S. intelligence issued a secret but stark warning that foreign adversaries had the capability to “compromise” America's voting infrastructure and raised specific concerns about the vulnerability of voter registration databases that later would be penetrated by China and Iran, a recently declassified memo obtained by Just the News also showed.

The National Intelligence Council's concerns were so extensive that officials personally briefed Trump at the White House in February 2020, according to photos obtained by Just the News showing top CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security officials joining with NIC analysts to inform the president.

But the American public was never fully alerted, even after evidence emerged that China had gained access to voter registration data in multiple states. 

"We judge that U.S. adversaries, including, at a minimum, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure for the 2020 presidential election," the NIC wrote in the memo dated Jan. 15, 2020. Until Gabbard last month declassified and Just the News reported it, that assessment never saw the light of day.

That document did not mention Venezuela, but the new memos make clear that some concerns about Venezuela emerged in 2020 and have yet to be made public. An intelligence community inspector found in an early January 2021 report that U.S. intelligence analysts appeared to hold back information on Chinese meddling efforts because they disagreed with the Trump administration’s policies. The Iranian regime’s efforts to harm Trump’s 2020 candidacy were also downplayed by some Democratic opponents of Trump ahead of his face-off with Joe Biden.

It was revealed last year that a confidential human source told FBI counterintelligence in the summer of 2020 that China’s communist government was seeking to meddle in the impending election in an effort to help then-candidate Joe Biden, according to a raw intelligence report distributed to federal agencies that was made public.

Warned about being an easy target, report ordered "recalled"

Though officials say an ongoing second Trump administration investigation has found no evidence yet that vote-counting machines themselves were directly compromised in the 2020 election, the memo also shows how such machines could be vulnerable to intrusions in the future and made clear that the voter registration databases that were breached by China and Iran were easy targets. 

The ODNI had released a March 2021 assessment in which agencies unanimously agreed Russia sought to hurt then-candidate Biden while Iran worked to harm then-President Trump in 2020 — but the agencies did not reach unanimity on China. The majority argued China didn’t try to influence the election against Trump, while a minority dissent contended that’s exactly what Beijing did.

Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who is now Trump’s CIA director, revealed in early January 2021 that he had found evidence about the politicization of China election influence analysis inside the IC and of undue pressure being brought to bear against the analysts who had assessed that China had worked to stop Trump from being reelected.

The intelligence report was titled “Chinese Government Production and Export of Fraudulent US Driver's Licenses to Chinese Sympathizers in the United States, in Order to Create Tens of Thousands of Fraudulent Mail-in Votes for US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020.” That report was soon recalled in 2020, with spy agencies told to delete the information before they had a chance to properly investigate its claims.

Bombshell revelations about alleged Chinese election meddling — and the politicized suppression of analyses pointing to Beijing trying to hurt Trump in 2020 — were made public on January 7, 2021.

Barry Zulauf, an analytic ombudsman and longtime intelligence official, issued a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee where he noted, among many things, that some analysts appeared to hold back information on Chinese efforts because they disagreed with the Trump administration’s policies.

“Given analytic differences in the way Russia and China analysts examined their targets, China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. The analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,” Zulauf wrote.

China analysts balk at “that vulgarian in the Oval Office”

Just the News reported that Zulauf later revealed that analysts said they didn’t want their intel used by “that vulgarian in the Oval Office” to pursue policies toward China they personally disagreed with.

Ratcliffe signed an unclassified letter in January 2021 contending that “from my unique vantage point as the individual who consumes all of the U.S. government’s most sensitive intelligence on the People’s Republic of China, I do not believe the majority view expressed by the Intelligence Community analysts fully and accurately reflects the scope of the Chinese government’s efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections.”

The ombudsman's report, Ratcliffe contended, “includes concerning revelations about the politicization of China election influence reporting and of undue pressure being brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence.”

Zulauf said that “due to varying collection and insight into hostile state actors’ leadership intentions on domestic influence campaigns, the definitional use of the terms ‘influence’ and ‘interference’ and associated confidence levels are applied differently by the China and Russia analytic communities.” In his January 2021 letter, Ratcliffe said that “similar actions by Russia and China are assessed and communicated to policymakers differently, potentially leading to the false impression that Russia sought to influence the election, but China did not.”

The ombudsman also revealed two national intelligence officers wrote an “NIC alternative analysis memo” in October 2020 “which expressed alternative views on potential Chinese election influence activities.” Zulauf said that “these alternative views met with considerable organizational counter pressure.”

“I am adding my voice in support of the stated minority view — based on all available sources of intelligence, with definitions consistently applied, and reached independent of political considerations or undue pressure — that the People’s Republic of China sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections,” Ratcliffe said in January 2021.