The top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees are asking the CIA director and the Director of National Intelligence to keep their phones on and answer on Election Day. The reason is that they expect the president to claim foreign interference in the midterms, and they want someone who can check his intelligence in real time.
The Phone Call Nobody Should Need To Request
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut told CBS News this week that they have asked CIA Director John Ratcliffe and DNI Jay Clayton to be reachable on Election Day. The goal is direct access to the senior officials who could confirm or demolish any interference claim coming out of the White House.
"What we can demand is, what is the basis of this intelligence? What is the source of this intelligence?" Warner said.
Think about where we are. Two senior lawmakers are arranging a hotline to the spy chiefs in case the president invents a foreign plot. That is a sentence from a bad political thriller, and it is now a calendar item.
War-Gaming The Worst Case
Himes did not dress it up. "We're making the assumption that the president is not going to accept the results of what looks to be a very challenging election for him and his party," he told reporters on Wednesday. "There's a wide array of scenarios that we have war-gamed and trained for."
The scenarios apparently include Trump citing fabricated or selectively presented intelligence to cast doubt on results. They also include the possibility of what the lawmakers described as extraordinary federal intervention, potentially including attempts to seize ballots or voting equipment.
Seizing ballots. In an American midterm. A sitting member of Congress said that out loud as a planning assumption, and the reaction in most of the country was a shrug and a refill.
The July Address Is The Preview
This is not paranoia built from nothing. In a July prime-time address, Trump cited declassified intelligence about China's acquisition of American voter data to raise concerns about election security.
The material he released did not show that Beijing had altered votes or election results. It is also unclear how much of the voter data China acquired was publicly available, though the White House has said it included nonpublic data.
So the template exists. Take a real but limited piece of intelligence, wave it around in prime time, and let the implication do the heavy lifting. Nobody has to say the election was stolen if the vibes say it for them.
Influence Is Not Interference, And The Difference Matters
Here is the part that should calm everyone down and instead makes the whole thing weirder. The intelligence community distinguishes between foreign influence, which is about swaying voters or eroding trust, and interference, which means targeting voting machines and registration systems.
On interference, Himes was blunt: "Nothing out there suggests that there is either the capability or the intent to do interference." On influence, he described a "pretty robust influence environment," with Russia, Iran and China all active and a "grab bag" of others, North Korea included, weighing their options.
Warner said Russia is running operations similar to prior cycles, including efforts targeting Democrats. Himes added that Russian campaigns are also focused, in a bipartisan way, on people and things that have been aggressive on Ukraine. Iran is eyeing disruption in Europe, and China's efforts are more selective, aimed at local races.
In other words, the real threat is the usual troll-farm sludge aimed at your feed. The machines are not under attack. But a president hunting for a pretext does not need the machines to be under attack. He just needs an intelligence briefing that sounds scary enough.
Overdue Reports And A Gutted Watchdog
Congress has not received several election-related intelligence assessments required by law, including the reports due 120, 60 and 30 days before Election Day. The committees got a classified update this week, and the House panel expects another bipartisan briefing next week.
Warner and Himes blamed the delays on Clayton's predecessors at ODNI, Tulsi Gabbard and Bill Pulte, who held the job in an acting capacity. "The previous two DNIs had zero interest in complying with the law here," Warner said. He did acknowledge that Clayton has made an effort to fix some of the deficiencies.
The lawmakers also flagged cuts to the Foreign Malign Influence Center at ODNI and a significant staffing reduction at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which helps state and local officials protect election infrastructure. Himes warned that losing technical expertise could undermine the government's ability to detect foreign threats, even if career analysts stay committed to objective work.
The Official Responses Are Doing A Lot Of Work
An ODNI spokesperson said Clayton has made clear to committee leadership that he is available "24/7 on any issue." A CIA spokesperson said Ratcliffe "is responsive to CIA's Oversight Committees and will continue to be available as appropriate."
Read those side by side. One agency said yes, any time. The other said as appropriate. Appropriate according to whom, exactly? Warner and Himes asked for a phone number that works on one specific day, and the CIA answered with a hedge.
CBS News said it reached out to the White House for comment. Himes did offer one reassurance: recent meetings with career intelligence officials left him confident that analysts would resist pressure to manufacture evidence of foreign interference.
The Dingo Take
Start with the election officials, the poll workers, and the career analysts at the CIA and ODNI. They are the ones who will be standing between a fabricated claim and a federal move on the ballot boxes, and they are working with fewer people, weaker defenses, and bosses who have a documented habit of missing legal deadlines. Himes says he trusts the analysts to refuse to cook the books. That trust is carrying a staggering amount of weight.
Now the politicians. Warner and Himes deserve credit for planning ahead, and also deserve to feel a little sick about why they have to. When the opposition's Election Day strategy includes a phone tree to the spy chiefs, the country has already conceded something ugly. A normal government does not need a rapid-response unit to fact-check the president's intelligence claims about an election he has not yet lost.
The quiet good news is that the intelligence says the machines are safe and nobody is plotting to flip votes. The bad news is that safe machines were never the point. If the plan is to declare a foreign plot anyway, the facts only matter if somebody with a badge and a phone is willing to say so, loudly, before the ballots are in a truck. Keep your ringer on, Director Ratcliffe.
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