The FBI holds a major news conference on 2020 election security
DNI Ratcliffe, FBI Director Wray says Iran, Russia have obtained voter registration information
CNN may bill itself as a 24-hour news network but it chose not to bother with the breaking news coming from the FBI news conference regarding election interference by bad actors overseas.
While Fox News and MSNBC aired the remarks made by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray about foiled attempts by Iran and Russia to sow chaos and disinformation in the 2020 presidential election, CNN, which heavily pushed the Russian collusion narrative through much of the Trump presidency, continued with its regularly scheduled programming only to then summarize the roughly seven-minute presser in the final minutes of the ironically titled "OutFront."
CNN has a history of skipping major news events. Last week, the anti-Trump network skipped multiple days of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, prioritizing its coverage toward Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
While Fox News and MSNBC offered virtually uninterrupted coverage of the hearing, CNN also chose to ignore the explosive New York Post report on Hunter Biden's emails.
DNI RADCLIFFE, FBI SAYS IRAN, RUSSIA ATTEMPTING TO INTERFERE WITH 2020 ELECTION
CNN raised eyebrows in the early months of the coronavirus outbreak for beginning to skip President Trump's remarks at the White House task force briefings.
In July, both CNN and MSNBC ignored the breaking news of the mass shooting that took place in Chicago that left at least 15 people shot outside of a funeral home.
During Wednesday evening's news conference, Ratcliffe informed the public that Iran and Russia had taken specific actions to influence voters' opinions. He noted that the registration information they obtained could be used to confuse voters through false communication.
The Iranian interference that's been discovered, Ratcliffe said, has been designed to incite social unrest and damage President Trump.
"This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos, and undermine your confidence in American democracy," he said. "To that end, we have already seen Iran sending spoofed emails designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump. You may have seen some reporting on this in the last 24 hours or you may have even been one of the recipients of those emails."
He added that Iran was distributing a video with false information about fraudulent ballots.
"Iran is distributing other content to include a video that implies that individuals could cast fraudulent ballots, even from overseas. This video and any claims about such allegedly fraudulent ballots are not true," he said.
"These actions are desperate attempts by desperate adversaries. Even if the adversaries pursue further attempts to intimidate or attempt to undermine voter confidence, know that our election systems are resilient and you can be confident your votes are secure. Although we have not seen the same actions from Russia, we are aware that they have obtained some voter information just as they did in 2016. Rest assured that we are prepared for the possibility of actions by those hostile to democracy."
Wray vowed to take action in order to ensure the integrity of U.S. elections. He said Americans should be "confident" that their votes count.
"We are not going to let our guard down," he added.
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The news conference was held as Democratic voters in at least four battleground states, including Florida and Pennsylvania, have received threatening emails, falsely purporting to be from the conservative group Proud Boys, that warned “we will come after you” if the recipients didn’t vote for President Trump.
The voter-intimidation operation apparently used email addresses obtained from state voter registration lists, which include party affiliation and home addresses and can include email addresses and phone numbers. Those addresses were then used in an apparently widespread targeted spamming operation. The senders claimed they would know which candidate the recipient was voting for in the Nov. 3 election, for which early voting is ongoing.
Fox News' Sam Dorman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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