White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Tuesday that she is not aware of any report issued by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s office about foreign interference.
“I am not aware of any report that he has received” on that, she said, responding to a question from The Epoch Times.
Some have wondered whether Ratcliffe will provide a report on potential election interference on behalf of a foreign government, as outlined in a 2018 executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
The order also allows for the imposition of “any recommended sanctions” against foreign entities or others that are believed to have interfered in the election.
These sanctions could include “blocking and prohibiting all transactions in a person’s property and interests in property subject to United States jurisdiction,” “exclusion of a person’s alien corporate officers from the United States,” and “any other measures authorized by law,” among other provisions, according to the order.
She explained that it could give Trump “all kinds of power … to do everything from seize assets to freeze things, demand the impoundment of the machines,” referring to voting machines.
The 2018 Trump order further added: “In recent years, the proliferation of digital devices and internet-based communications has created significant vulnerabilities and magnified the scope and intensity of the threat of foreign interference, as illustrated in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with this threat.”
“Essentially, we had universal mail-in balloting across this country in a way we hadn’t seen before, and to that point, almost 73 percent of the American people this year voted before Election Day, a good percentage of those by mail,” he said.
“That’s about an 80 percent increase over anything we’ve ever seen before, so it’s little wonder that we see what’s happening around the country as a result of that, with mail-in balloting and all of the questions—and the questions that are being raised in lawsuits and by everyday Americans about what happened in the election,” Ratcliffe said.