Donald Trump election loss: Intelligence report reveals Russia's attempts to help ex-POTUS in November elections

A long-standing allegation that has hounded now-former President Donald Trump was that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections to help him win while smearing his opponent. A declassified intelligence report now reveals that Russia has made another attempt at helping Trump in the November elections.

The intelligence community released an assessment that was declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Tuesday, revealing that the Russian government made a repeat attempt to interfere in the November elections to help Trump win while smearing Joe Biden.

The attempt was done through an influence campaign that sought to “denigrate” Biden while bringing up Trump. The report further detailed that the campaign made use of Trump’s allies. However, smearing Biden, who ultimately won the elections, was not the only objective that the Russian government tried to reach this time.

Russia’s motives also included undermining public confidence in the US electoral process while worsening sociopolitical tensions and division. The overall report also assessed the foreign threats in the 2020 elections by the country’s adversaries including Russia and Iran, that sought to instill distrust in the democracy of the United States while also targeting specific presidential candidates.

The overall report also further confirms the assumption of Trump and his allies publicly embracing the disinformation campaign against Biden, met with Kremlin-linked figures that were also participating in the effort as well as pushing baseless conspiracy theories.

The intelligence report also said that while Iran made the most aggressive attempt to “undercut” Trump, the Islamic nation did not actively promote his Democratic rival, and their operations were smaller in scale compared to Russia. Despite Trump’s claims of election misconduct in terms of voter fraud and rigged machines, the report says no foreign interference was made on a technical scale.

Since leaving the White House, and even before, following the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, Trump’s net worth has since dropped. According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire’s index, an analysis of financial documents and filings from May 2016 to January 2021 revealed that the former president’s values in his properties and businesses dropped by around 26 percent. Filings further showed that Trump’s golf courses in Scotland have been consistently losing money.