Top Intelligence Democrats Are Bracing for a Midterm Meddling Claim
The top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees say they are working from the presumption that President Trump and his allies will allege fraud in this year's midterms in order to justify election interference.
Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said one route the president could take is claiming foreign interference in the voting process.
A White House spokeswoman, Lauren Bis, told NPR that Trump 'has done more than any other President to ensure we have free and fair elections.'
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Both lawmakers sit in the Gang of Eight, the senior group that oversees the spy agencies and gets the confidential briefings. That status is the play: Himes says that if the president announced on election day that the Iranians had undertaken an operation, he would go on television to say he had received no such briefing or information and had no reason to believe it.
Himes himself concedes the television statement does not end the crisis, calling it only a first step. And by his own account they have never seen an operation to actually interfere, and as of now see neither the capability nor the intent to interfere.