by Jerry Dunleavy
Dr. Barry A. Zulauf, a member of the Senior National Intelligence Service reported that others in the intelligence community said “I don’t want my intelligence going to the White House where it will be used by that vulgarian in the Oval Office to support policies against China with which I personally disagree.”
Analysts inside the U.S. intelligence community sought to conceal evidence of Chinese influence efforts from President Donald Trump during the 2020 election, with analysts saying they didn’t want their intel used by “that vulgarian in the Oval Office” to pursue policies toward China they personally disagreed with.
The revelation is found within a January 2021 report written by — and never before reported upon comments by — analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf, who conducted a review of the spy community’s handling of Russian versus Chinese meddling efforts during the 2020 election. Among his conclusions was that intelligence analysts downplayed China’s actions because they had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump and did not want to support the policies and priorities of the Trump administration toward China with which they “personally disagree.”
Just the News reported this week that the U.S. intelligence community has known since early 2020 that Beijing also gained access to American voter registration data and used that information to conduct opinion analysis related to the presidential election between Trump and then-former Vice President Joe Biden.
Chinese government election influence efforts in the 2020 election
This is not the only piece of evidence pointing to Chinese government election influence efforts in the 2020 election. Although much about China’s activities in 2020 remains classified, Just the News conducted a thorough review of publicly-available intelligence assessments, federal indictments, foreign government warnings, and cybersecurity firm analyses.
There is credible evidence that Chinese government-linked cyber hackers and Chinese social media troll farms took aim at the U.S. presidential election in 2020 and sought to undercut Trump during his run against now-former President Biden. There are also indicators that Chinese intelligence and law enforcement agencies — China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and its Ministry of Public Security (MPS) — also played a role in 2020.
Zulauf — a longtime intelligence officer — wrote in his January 2021 report: “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. These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the Administration's policies, saying in effect, I don't want our intelligence used to support those policies.”
U.S. intel analysts downplayed China assessments to avoid helping Trump
Zulauf discussed his report on a podcast later that year, where he quoted an analyst working on Chinese interference efforts as having essentially said that “I don't want my analysis going to the White House where that vulgarian … in the White House will use it to pursue policies toward China with which I personally disagree.”
An article in the Journal of Intelligence Conflict and Warfare recounted a 2023 speech by Zulauf, who said that the intelligence analyst was quoted as saying that “I don’t want my intelligence going to the White House where it will be used by that vulgarian in the Oval Office to support policies against China with which I personally disagree.”
“Dr. Zulauf went on to point out the various errors in this way of thinking — intelligence belongs to the community, not a single analyst, and further, while analysts are entitled to like or dislike particular leaders, they are not entitled to allow that to alter the intelligence products that they put forward,” the journal article said.
The review by Zulauf also found that allegations of Russian meddling and Chinese meddling were being measured based on differing standards, meaning Russia may have taken actions that were determined to be influence or interference efforts while, if and when China took the same or similar actions, those Chinese actions likely would not have been determined to be influence or interference efforts.
“Due to varying collection and insight into hostile state actors' leadership intentions and domestic election 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,” Zulauf wrote in his report.
The ombudsman found that “the terms were applied inconsistently across the analytic community” and that “failing to explain properly these definitions is inconsistent with Tradecraft Standards.”
“ODNI officials engaging with policymakers said that these customers did notice the result, particularly differences in the volume, frequency, and confidence levels of the intelligence coming from the China and Russia analytic communities on activities that, from their perspective, were very similar in their potential effects,” Zulauf added.
The analytic ombudsman noted that multiple national intelligence officers wrote an “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” but that then-DNI and now-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe agreed with the dissenting alternative views which argued that China had in fact attempted to influence the 2020 election to undercut Trump’s candidacy.
Majority view said China did not try to influence 2020 elections
The ODNI’s National Intelligence Council (NIC) released its intelligence community assessment on foreign threats to the 2020 election in March 2021, with ODNI saying that the majority view was that China did not ultimately try to meddle in the 2020 election, while the minority view — led by the national intelligence officer for cyber and other teams — said the Chinese did try to influence the election to hurt Trump’s reelection prospects.
“We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election,” the ODNI said. “We have high confidence in this judgment. China sought stability in its relationship with the United States, did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling."
The majority view stated that “the IC assesses that Chinese state media criticism of the Trump administration’s policies related to China and its response to the COVID-19 pandemic remained consistent in the lead-up to the election and was aimed at shaping perceptions of U.S. policies and bolstering China’s global position rather than to affect the 2020 US election.”
“We assess that Beijing’s risk calculus against influencing the election was informed by China’s preference for stability in the bilateral relationship, their probable judgment that attempting to influence the election could do lasting damage to U.S.-China ties, and belief that the election of either candidate would present opportunities and challenges for China,” the majority view said. “Beijing probably judged that Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election significantly damaged Moscow’s position and relationship with the United States and may have worried that Washington would uncover a Chinese attempt to deploy similar measures to influence or interfere in the election and punish Beijing.”
The majority view also said that “China probably also continued longstanding efforts to gather information on U.S. voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials” but argued that “we assess Beijing probably sought to use this information to predict electoral outcomes and to inform its efforts to influence U.S. policy toward China under either election outcome” and that “Beijing did not interfere with election infrastructure.”
Minority view says China did try to interfere with elections
The national intelligence officer for cyber at the time, Christopher Porter, assessed with others that the Chinese had indeed tried to undercut Trump in his reelection race.
“The National Intelligence Officer for Cyber assesses that China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection chances, primarily through social media and official public statements and media,” the ODNI assessment said of the “moderate confidence” assessment. “The NIO […] assesses that some of Beijing's influence efforts were intended to at least indirectly affect U.S. candidates, political processes, and voter preferences, meeting the definition for election influence used in this report.”
“This view differs from the IC assessment because it gives more weight to indications that Beijing preferred former President Trump’s defeat and the election of a more predictable member of the establishment instead, and that Beijing implemented some — and later increased — its election influence efforts, especially over the summer of 2020,” the assessment concluded. “The NIO assesses these indications are more persuasive than other information indicating that China decided not to intervene.”
The ODNI assessment added that the national intelligence officer for cyber “agrees that we have no information suggesting China tried to interfere with election processes.”
Ratcliffe: “China sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections”
Ratcliffe released a letter in January 2021 wherein he stood by the national intelligence officer for cyber in assessing that China had indeed tried to influence the 2020 race. “I do not believe the majority view expressed by Intelligence Community analysts fully and accurately reflects the scope of the Chinese government's efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections,” Ratcliffe said.
The then-DNI argued that “the majority view expressed in this ICA with regard to China's actions to influence the election fall short of the mark for several specific reasons” while “alternative viewpoints on China's election influence efforts have not been appropriately tolerated, much less encouraged.”
“This ICA gives the false impression that the NIO Cyber is the only analyst who holds the minority view on China. He is not — a fact that the Ombudsman found during his research and interviews with stakeholders,” Ratcliffe said. “Placing the NIO Cyber on a metaphorical island by attaching his name alone to the minority view is a testament to both his courage and to the effectiveness of the institutional pressures that have been brought to bear on others who agree with him.”
The current CIA director said then that “it is clear to me that different groups of analysts who focus on election threats from different countries are using different terminology to communicate the same malign actions” and that “definitional use of the terms ‘influence’ and ‘interference’ are different between the China and Russia analytic communities.”
Ratcliffe warned: “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. This is inconsistent with Tradecraft Standard 1.”
“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, and raising the need for the Intelligence Community to address the underlying issues with China reporting outlined above,” Ratcliffe concluded.
China meddled in the Canadian elections in 2019, others even earlier
China’s influence efforts in the U.S. election in 2020 did not come out of the blue, as the Chinese had meddled in other foreign elections in recent years prior.
Chinese cyber actors attempted to influence the Cambodian elections in 2018. Graphika, a social media analytics firm, first identified the “Spamouflage Dragon” online Chinese influence effort in 2019, noting that it was initially aimed at critics of CCP rule in Hong Kong.
Graphika also said that “Spamouflage Dragon’s politically focused disinformation campaigns appear to have started in the summer of 2019.” The Chinese group would also take aim at Taiwan and Australia in 2019.
The Global News reported in 2022 that “Canadian intelligence officials have warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that China has allegedly been targeting Canada with a vast campaign of foreign interference, which includes funding a clandestine network of at least eleven federal candidates running in the 2019 election.”
It was reported by The Globe and Mail the same year that the Canadian government was “warned after the 2019 federal election” that an “active foreign interference network” working “on behalf of the Chinese state was at work during the campaign.” The outlet cited an intelligence brief from February 2020 prepared by the Canadian Privy Council Office which discussed “subtle but effective interference networks” from China.
The brief reportedly said that “investigations into activities linked to the Canadian federal election in 2019 reveal an active foreign interference network.”
Canadian Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue’s 2025 report on the 2019 efforts by the Chinese found that China “engaged in foreign interference.” That report noted that Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director David Vigneault “said CSIS knew the People’s Republic of China sought to clandestinely and deceptively interfere” in 2019. The report also said that the Canadian Panel of Five “came to the same conclusion in 2019.”
Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force also “observed foreign interference activities from the PRC” in 2019 “targeting" certain candidates, according to the report, which added that “these observations are consistent with the publicly disclosable summaries of Canada’s overall intelligence holdings.”
China accessed and analyzed U.S. voter registration data in 2020
Mandiant said in March 2020 that “beginning this year, FireEye observed Chinese actor APT41 carry out one of the broadest campaigns by a Chinese cyber espionage actor we have observed in recent years.” A later assessment by the firm in 2024 cited that 2020 report and said that “APT41 conducted large-scale vulnerability exploitation and scanning activity that compromised U.S. government organizations ahead of” the 2020 “U.S. election cycle.”
The NIC wrote its aforementioned bombshell assessment in April 2020 — with it not being declassified until then-DNI Avril Haines did so in October 2022 — titled “Cyber Operations Enabling Expansive Digital Authoritarianism.”
“[Redacted] Chinese intelligence officials analyzed multiple U.S. states' [Redacted] election voter registration data, [Redacted] to conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 US general election,” the ODNI had assessed by April 2020.
The assessment said China is “increasing” its “ability to analyze and manipulate large quantities of personal information in ways that will allow them to more effectively target and influence, or coerce, individuals and groups in the United States and allied countries.”
“China and other authoritarian governments are using cyber espionage, attacks, and influence operations to extend the coercive reach of their ideological enforcement and political control efforts beyond their borders. In some cases, they are impinging on Western democracies' sovereignty and interests to enhance their domestic stability,” the ODNI had found in early 2020.
The ODNI added in early 2020 that “adversaries almost certainly are already applying data-analysis techniques to hone their efforts against U.S. targets.”
The ODNI made it clear that, by early 2020, it knew that Chinese intelligence officials had analyzed the voter registration data for multiple U.S. states, and that it had apparently used that information to carry out analysis on U.S. public opinion related to the 2020 race between Trump and Biden.
Ratcliffe, alongside then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, would later announce in October 2020 that “some voter registration information has been obtained by Iran and separately by Russia” and that “this data can be used by foreign actors to communicate false information to registered voters.” China was not mentioned, despite the foreign adversary's apparently similar actions.
The NIC later wrote a 2022 assessment declassified in 2023 which admitted that “since 2020, PRC senior leaders have issued broad directives to intensify efforts to influence U.S. policy and public opinion in China's favor.”
Chinese influence operations tied to CCP intel and security services
The long-running and Chinese state-sponsored “Spamouflage Dragon” and “Dragon Bridge” online influence campaigns conducted around the world — and aimed at Trump Administration policies and Trump himself during the 2020 election — have been repeatedly tied to Chinese law enforcement and China’s MPS, including its 912 Special Working Group.
Cybersecurity researchers also labeled a variety of Chinese cyber actors as being Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups — and a number of these have engaged in election influence efforts over the past decade, variously including attempting to meddle in the U.S. in 2020 as well as in elections in the UK, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Cambodia, and elsewhere.
The DOJ said APT31 was part of a “cyberespionage program run by” the Chinese MSS through the Hubei State Security Department, while the State Department declared that APT31 was a “collection of Chinese state-sponsored intelligence officers, contract hackers, and support staff.”
CISA and the FBI assessed that the “tactics, techniques, and procedures” of APT40 cyber actors were “associated” with China’s MSS and with China’s Hainan State Security Department in particular.
The Mandiant cybersecurity firm found that APT41 was “a prolific Chinese cyber threat group that carries out state-sponsored espionage activity.” The DOJ later said that an indicted member of APT41 “boasted of connections to” the Chinese MSS.
The DOJ also revealed in indictments years after 2020 that China’s MPS and MSS had seemingly taken actions during that presidential election.
Spamouflage and other Chinese actors targeted Trump ahead of 2020 election
Graphika publicly released an April 2020 titled “Return of the (Spamouflage) Dragon Pro-Chinese Spam Network Tries Again.”
The report said one of the accounts in Spamouflage “shifted its focus in late January to talking about the coronavirus” and that “in March, as the Chinese government’s narrative shifted to arguing that China had responded better than the United States, it tweeted about the reported wave of xenophobic attacks on Chinese Americans linked to the outbreak.”
Graphika wrote: “In late January and early February, the network also expressed confidence in China’s ability to handle the virus. By March, the tone had changed: it proclaimed China’s ‘victory’ in the ‘war’ against the epidemic, praised China’s status as a role model for other countries, and contrasted China’s ‘victory’ with the struggles of Western countries, especially the United States.”
Graphika released an August 2020 report titled “Spamouflage Goes to America Pro-Chinese Inauthentic Network Debuts English-Language Videos” which showed the Chinese influence network was targeting Trump and his policies in the months ahead of the 2020 election.
“Social media accounts from the pro-Chinese political spam network Spamouflage Dragon started posting English-language videos that attacked American policy and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in June, as the rhetorical confrontation between the United States and China escalated,” the firm said.
Graphika noted that “this is the first time the network has published substantial volumes of English-language content alongside its ongoing Chinese coverage — a clear expansion of its scope.”
“But Trump is still addicted to his re-election, don’t think how to control the epidemic and this riot,” one video by Spamouflage which took direct aim at Trump and his campaign said. “Instead, planning to restart the campaign, and even applied ‘blame pushing’ to domestic supporters … Instead of appeasing people’s anger, he is devoted to arousing the public anger.”
Graphika said that “as tensions between the United States and China continued to climb in July, the videos took an increasingly hostile tone, with a greater focus on the Trump administration’s China policy.”
The firm said dozens of Spamouflage YouTube channels launched an August 2020 video titled, “When I voted for Trump, I almost sentenced myself to death." The video included opinion polls showing Trump trailing Biden, with a voice-over claiming that “the Trump administration has had the worst of it just before the election.”
The Google Threat Analysis Group later released a 2024 report which assessed that, in 2020, Spamouflage pushed some narratives which “were highly critical of then U.S. President Trump, including accusing him of deflecting his failures by drawing attention to China with terms like ‘the China virus,’ and featuring interview clips of people stating they regret voting for him.”
Chinese government’s MPS and MSS both took action during 2020 election
An executive at Microsoft had assessed in September 2020 that a group it dubbed Zirconium — which CISA has said is also APT31 — “has attempted to gain intelligence on organizations associated with the upcoming U.S. presidential election” and that “we’ve detected thousands of attacks from Zirconium between March 2020 and September 2020 resulting in nearly 150 compromises.”
The Justice Department later filed an indictment in 2023 which said that members of the Chinese MPS’s 912 Special Project Working Group had coordinated with officials in the CCP’s United Front Work Department back in 2020, with an FBI special agent arguing that “this coordination likely included topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government’s response to developments in Hong Kong, civil unrest in the United States following the death of George Floyd, and the 2020 presidential election.”
The DOJ then later filed an indictment against Chinese MSS officers later in 2024 related to a host of criminal influence efforts. The DOJ revealed then that “the allegations in the indictment regarding the malicious cyber activity targeting political officials, candidates, and campaign personnel are consistent with” a joint report by DOJ and DHS about the 2020 election which had cited incidents when Chinese government-affiliated actors “materially impacted the security of networks associated with or pertaining to U.S. political organizations, candidates, and campaigns during the 2020 federal elections.”
The DOJ said that “the indictment does not allege that the hacking furthered any Chinese government influence operations against the United States” in 2020, but the indictment charged seven Chinese hackers — identified as being part of APT31 — with “conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud” for their involvement in an effort spanning fourteen years and “targeting U.S. and foreign critics, businesses, and political officials.” The DOJ said dozens of MSS intelligence officers had been involved.
“Through their involvement with the APT31 Group, since at least 2010, the defendants conducted global campaigns of computer hacking targeting political dissidents and perceived supporters located inside and outside of China, government and political officials, candidates, and campaign personnel in the United States and elsewhere and American companies,” the DOJ said.
The DOJ added that “the targeted U.S. government officials” ranged across a host of federal departments and agencies, including the White House, and that “targets also included election campaign staff from both major U.S. political parties in advance of the 2020 election.”
China’s possible fake mail-in ballot plot
Last year, FBI Director Kash Patel turned over to Congress a long-hidden intelligence report from 2020 which raised concerns that China had plans to mass-produce fake U.S. driver's licenses to carry out a scheme to swing the election to Biden with fake mail-in ballots.
The FBI information report had been sent as an uncorroborated advisory to U.S. intelligence agencies on August 24, 2020. It was then suddenly recalled in September 2020 — the day after then-FBI Director Chris Wray testified to Congress that he had not seen any large-scale voter fraud efforts.
The raw and unverified intelligence report was bluntly 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.” The report was soon recalled, with spy agencies told to delete the information before they had a chance to properly investigate its claims.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had said in July 2020 that “fraudulent driver’s licenses […] continue to be found by CBP officers” at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. From January through June 2020, CBP said its officers had “seized 1,513 shipments with fraudulent documents — a total of 19,888 counterfeit US drivers’ licenses” and that “the majority of these shipments were arriving from China and Hong Kong.” The CBP press release did not directly link the fraudulent licenses to potential voter fraud efforts.
DOJ and DHS said no foreign government compromised integrity of 2020 elections
The Justice Department, FBI, DHS, and CISA put out a “joint report” in March 2021 which argued there was “no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor manipulated election results or otherwise compromised the integrity of the 2020 federal elections.”
The report downplayed or dismissed the impact that Chinese meddling may have had.
“We identified several incidents when Russian, Chinese, and Iranian government-affiliated actors materially impacted the security of networks associated with or pertaining to U.S. political organizations, candidates, and campaigns during 2020 federal elections,” the joint report said. “In most cases, the IC has assessed that it is unclear if those actors sought these accesses to inform broader foreign policy interests or election-specific operations. Several such actors gathered at least some information they could have released in influence operations, but ultimately we did not see any such materials deployed, modified, or destroyed.”
China kept meddling ahead of 2022 midterms — partly due to no fear of any Biden response
“Mandiant has recently observed Dragon Bridge, an influence campaign we assess with high confidence to be operating in support of the political interests of the People’s Republic of China, aggressively targeting the United States by seeking to sow division both between the U.S. and its allies and within the U.S. political system itself,” Mandiant assessed in October 2022.
The firm said that “recent narratives” by the Chinese actors included “aggressive attempts to discredit the U.S. democratic process, including attempts to discourage Americans from voting in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.”
Mandiant also later assessed that “APT41 conducted large-scale vulnerability exploitation and scanning activity that compromised U.S. government organizations ahead of” the 2022 midterms.
The ODNI later also said that “TikTok accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022.”
The NIC penned an assessment in December 2022 — just after the midterms — which argued that Chinese leadership directives to influence the U.S. which had been issued a couple years prior “gave PRC influence actors more freedom to operate ahead of the midterms than the presidential election in 2020, probably because PRC officials believed that Beijing was under less scrutiny during the midterms and because they did not expect the current [Biden] Administration to retaliate as severely as they feared in 2020” back when Trump was still president.
“We have been unable to conclusively attribute to the PRC other midterms related to online influence activity — which the U.S. private sector has described as inauthentic that supported Beijing's interests,” the council said.
“A large volume of this activity involved content that highlighted U.S. political divisions and disparaged U.S. democracy, themes which are consistent with China's internal guidance.”
Jerry Dunleavy
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/security/analysts-hid-chinese-2020-meddling-intel-vulgarian-trump-over-opposing-his
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