“The president has specifically directed us to make the matter of the election meddling and securing our election process a top priority,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told reporters. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Trump silent as top officials warn of Russian threat

Donald Trump’s senior national security officials said they were speaking for the president when they stood together in the White House Thursday and vowed to combat ongoing Russian cyber meddling.

But Trump himself remained silent.


In an unusual appearance in the White House briefing room, several top security and intelligence chiefs accused Moscow of ongoing influence operations, ranging from social media disinformation campaigns to attempts to hack political targets and infiltrate the country’s electoral infrastructure.

“We continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told reporters at the White House. "We're throwing everything at it.”

While providing few details, the officials promised action in response, from offering states cyber assistance to possible retaliatory attacks — all at the direction of Trump himself, they said.

“The president has specifically directed us to make the matter of the election meddling and securing our election process a top priority,” Coats added.

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The briefing was the administration’s most public and unified assessment yet of past and ongoing Russian attempts to undermine American democracy. But it was a striking contrast to the president’s muddled comments about Moscow's election interference, including his controversial remarks alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin last month in Helsinki, where Trump shocked even his own aides by seeming to give Putin’s denials of interference equal weight against the conclusions of his own intelligence chiefs.

And despite Thursday's image of coordination, Trump did not take the opportunity to chime in himself. By late Thursday afternoon, Trump had tweeted nine times — but did not mention Russia.

A forceful administration statement about Russian meddling released Wednesday night came via the State Department, not the White House.

Trump has also regularly called into question aspects of the investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 elections and on Wednesday urged Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, once again labeling it a "rigged witch hunt."

Thursday's high-wattage briefing at the White House provided a stark contrast to Trump's oscillating view on Russia, and appeared to be the administration's answer to growing criticism that the president isn't doing enough to protect elections from foreign meddling.

At the press conference, national security adviser John Bolton said Trump “has made it abundantly clear to everybody who has responsibility in this area that he cares deeply about it … and that he supports them fully.” Bolton also stressed the point in a Thursday letter to Senate Democrats who had openly doubted Trump’s commitment to protecting the 2018 midterm elections from Russian meddling.

Bolton and Coats were joined at the podium by FBI chief Christopher Wray, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone.

Their appearance came less than 100 days before the midterms and amid increasing reports that Russia is continuing to meddle in the elections and U.S. politics more broadly through cyberattacks and social media disinformation campaigns.

The officials stressed they believe both that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and that it continues to do so today. In response, they said they are working closely together and with state and private-sector partners to identify, neutralize and counter cyberattacks and influence operations targeting U.S. elections.

But they offered few details about what methods they were seeing from Russia, what other nations might pose a threat, and exactly how they would defend American democracy.

Coats said it was well-known that “the Russians try to hack into and steal information from candidates and government officials alike,” but he declined to identify which lawmakers or candidates have been targeted this year. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said hackers tried to compromise her staffers’ accounts, while Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said her office was the target of a presumed foreign sting operation.

While Russia continues to spread misinformation on social media, U.S. officials “are not yet seeing the same kind of efforts to specifically target election infrastructure” like voter registration databases, as occurred in 2016, according to Wray.

Coats agreed, saying that Russia’s efforts this year were “not the kind of robust campaign that we assessed in the 2016 election.”

The officials repeatedly stressed their increasingly effective coordination, with Bolton saying that senior White House officials “meet on this constantly.” He also revealed that Trump had chaired a second National Security Council meeting on election security in addition to the publicly disclosed one that occurred last week. A White House fact sheet said the first meeting took place on May 3.

Coats’ office leads an interagency working group on election security that meets weekly with representatives of the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA and the NSA.

Nakasone, who also heads U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s digital warfighting unit, struck a forceful tone in warning that the U.S. was prepared to aggressively rebut election interference. His personnel, he said, “are prepared to conduct operations against those actors attempting to undermine our nation’s midterm elections.”

“Our forces are well-trained, ready and very capable,” he said. “I have complete confidence in the forces under my command.”

Nielsen said her agency’s relationships with state officials were strong and touted the federal government’s free cybersecurity assistance to states.

“The progress we have made is real,” she said, “and the nation’s elections are more resilient today because of the work we are all doing.”

Like her colleagues, Nielsen offered few specifics. The officials’ clear goal was instead a more general reassurance that they were focused on keeping Russian hackers out of U.S. election systems.

“We acknowledge the threat,” said Coats. “It is real. It is continuing. And we’re doing everything we can to have a legitimate election that the American people can have trust in.”

The national security leaders’ remarks stood in contrast to Trump’s remarks in recent weeks, which generated confusion about the president’s opinion on Russian interference. Following his meeting with Putin in Helsinki last month, the president appeared to tell reporters that he didn't believe Moscow was carrying out ongoing operations that targeted U.S. democratic institutions. Soon thereafter, however, Trump said he misspoke.

Trump’s critics were not fully swayed by Thursday’s display.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s 2016 election meddling efforts, quipped in a tweet: "Glad to see the White House finally do something about election security — even if it’s only a press conference. Now if only it was actually backed up by anything the President has said or done on Russia.”

Indeed, the national security officials could only do so much. Minutes after they left the briefing room, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested that the focus on Russia was misplaced, saying “our intelligence shows that there are a number of others” seeking to meddle in U.S. elections.