There was a pretty amazing hearing on Tuesday in the Senate Intelligence Committee. All of the heads of the intelligence community were there—I like to picture the Intelligence Community as a lovely string of quaint shops selling nostrums, potpourri, and exotic fish poisons—and they all pointed out to the country that there is no question that the Russians (and others) will try to ratfck the 2018 midterm elections. From Vox:

Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that Russia believes it did so well trying to influence the 2016 presidential election that it will try to do so again as hundreds of politicians contest for House and Senate seats throughout the year. “There should be no doubt that Russia perceives that its past efforts have been successful and views the 2018 midterm US elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” Coats, the nation’s top spy, said on Tuesday. “Frankly, the United States is under attack.”

That this whole thing is becoming so matter-of-fact is positively unnerving. That this hearing is going to disappear into the news cycle as thoroughly as it's going to is positively depressing.

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The administration has no real plan in place, nor does it particularly want to create one. The Congress is bloody hopeless. (If he were serious about protecting the integrity of American elections, Speaker Paul Ryan would have pulled Devin Nunes’ chairmanship weeks ago.) Meanwhile, the only people in government who seem to want to do anything about this very real threat are the spooks, which is, I admit, a very strange state of affairs.

Second — and more worryingly — Coats is saying that the Kremlin thought its last influence campaign went so swimmingly that it plans to do it again in November. Here’s how, according to Coats: “We expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false flag personas, sympathetic spokesmen, and other means to influence and try to build on its wide range of operations and exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States.”

The most signifying moment came when Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked FBI director Christopher Wray if the president had given Wray any suggestions regarding his testimony.

…Wray said he was “not specifically directed by the president.”

When the damn intelligence community is the only thing standing between legitimate elections and a public farce, we have come to a place I never thought I’d see.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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