Senate Intelligence Heads Warn That Russian Election Meddling Continues

By NICHOLAS FANDOS OCT. 4, 2017

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee delivered a stark warning on Wednesday to political candidates: Expect Russian operatives to remain active and determined to again try to sow chaos in elections next month and next year.

At a rare news conference, Senators Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the committee’s chairman, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and its vice chairman, broadly endorsed the conclusions of American spy agencies that said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a campaign of hacking and propaganda to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

“The Russian intelligence service is determined — clever — and I recommend that every campaign and every election official take this very seriously,” Mr. Burr said.

“You can’t walk away from this and believe that Russia’s not currently active,” he added.

American intelligence agencies have concluded that Mr. Putin initially wanted to hurt Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, but later tried to explicitly help Donald J. Trump’s insurgent campaign. The senators said they have reached no conclusion on whether anyone around Mr. Trump was part of that effort.

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“There needs to be a more aggressive whole-of-government approach in terms of protecting our electoral system,” Mr. Warner said. “Remember, to make a change even in a national election doesn’t require penetration into 50 states.”

He added, “You could pick two or three states in two or three jurisdictions and alter an election.”

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The senators said that their investigators have pored over nearly 100,000 pages of classified intelligence and documents turned over by the Trump campaign and other associates of the president’s, and they have conducted more than 100 interviews with many of the top officials connected to both the Trump campaign and the intelligence community. Investigators also recently received material from Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Twitter, about advertisements on their platforms linked to Russia.

“This feels like it’s taking a long time. It is taking a long time,” Mr. Warner said. “But getting it right and getting all the facts is what we owe the American people.”

Mr. Burr had expressed a desire this summer to conclude the inquiry by year’s end. But on Wednesday, he all but conceded that with so many avenues of investigation still open — 25 interviews are scheduled for the remainder of October alone — that would not be possible. While he declined to put a date on the investigation’s conclusion, he said that the committee planned to release portions of its findings before the 2018 midterm election primaries.