Annual intelligence assessment doesn’t address foreign threats to US elections
Annual intelligence assessment doesn’t address foreign threats to US elections
Publish Date: 2026-03-18 15:06:00
Source Domain: www.nextgov.com
An annual intelligence assessment of worldwide threats to the U.S. omitted mentions of foreign threats to American elections for the first time in nearly a decade, a notable shift in a midterm election year that suggests the Trump administration is shifting focus away from a risk long treated as central to national security.
The assessment was delivered on the heels of a major global threats hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, where top officials including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe testified about the ongoing Iran war and other top-of-mind matters.
The hearing highlighted growing tensions between intelligence assessments and the administration’s framing of the conflict with Tehran. It also came a day after the high-profile departure of Gabbard aide and National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who said he could not agree with the Trump administration’s premise for the Iran war that began Feb. 28.
Gabbard drew ire from committee Democrats over election threats matters.
“Are you saying there is no foreign threat to our elections in the midterms this year?” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat, asked Gabbard.
“The intelligence community has been and continues to remain focused on any collection and intelligence that show a potential foreign threat,” she said.
Gabbard has drawn scrutiny over her involvement in an FBI raid of a Fulton County, Georgia elections office that was at the center of President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020. Gabbard’s agency, in part, is charged with countering foreign election interference, and doesn’t have conventional authority to manage domestic election affairs.
Asked about this, she said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has “purview and overview” over the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, both of which “have purview over election security responsibilities to…
