6 Times Foreign Powers Meddled in Our Elections

From The Daily Signal.com (Aug. 17):

A foreign government sought to influence the U.S. presidential race to benefit a favored candidate by pushing stories into the American media, working through an ambassador, and instigating what could be called collusion with the candidate.

This was 1796 and the culprit was France. Fast forward 200 years, and China tried to influence a presidential election. Two decades after that, it’s Russian meddling.

Top Trump administration officials announced earlier this month that Russian operatives are trying to interfere with the 2018 midterm elections, as they did with the 2016 presidential election. The U.S. government, they said, is taking actions across agencies to prevent it from happening again.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted more than two dozen Russian individuals and entities for cybercrimes, including pushing misinformation to undermine the 2016 election.

Then, as now, there was no evidence votes were changed. Instead, foreigners spread money or propaganda for the purpose of influencing the election.

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The Soviet Union meddled in U.S. elections at least as far back as 1948, said Paul Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College.

“Liberals never gave a damn about Russian meddling in American elections until 2016,” Kengor told The Daily Signal. “They care now because Hillary Clinton lost.”

Here are six key examples of foreign influence in U.S. elections.

1. France and the 1796 Election

The outgoing administration of President George Washington wanted American neutrality in the war between Britain and France. However, the leader of the Democratic-Republican party, Thomas Jefferson, was avidly pro-French and believed the United States owed a debt to the country that helped it gain independence from the British.

Chief Justice John Jay went to Britain to hammer out an agreement, the Jay Treaty ratified in 1795, pledging U.S. neutrality in the conflict and establishing peace—at least for a time—between the U.S. and Britain.

Washington didn’t seek a third term, but his vice president, Federalist John Adams, was running to succeed him and was pro-British.

France’s ambassador to the United States, Pierre Auguste Adet, was among French officials and diplomats who openly expressed support for Jefferson and attacked Adams and the Federalists. So it wasn’t a covert operation.

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2. World War II and the 1940 Election

Some recently reported Russian methods are surprisingly similar to how an ally interfered with the 1940 presidential election, planting fake news stories in newspapers and making public what were believed to be private communications.

President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to intervene in World War II, but the American public and Congress—remembering World War I—had little appetite for what seemed like another European gambit.

Britain, besieged by Nazi Germany, thought one way to get American help was to reshape American public opinion.

“This was literally a matter of changing the establishment’s view of U.S. support for the war,” said Morris, who writes about British espionage in the 1940 election in his book “Rogue Spooks.”

The British Security Coordination, a front corporation for British intelligence in the United States, had offices inside the U.S. that conducted espionage and planted fake news stories in American media to tilt public opinion, according to information declassified in 1999. [read more]

The other four foreign powers were: Soviet Union in 1948, 1960, & 1980; and China in 1996.