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Christopher A. Wray, the director of the F.B.I., warned a House committee on Thursday that Russia is actively pursuing a disinformation campaign against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and expressed alarm about violent extremist groups.
“Racially motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, has made up a majority of domestic terrorism threats, Mr. Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee. He also echoed an intelligence community assessment last month that Russia is conducting a “very active” campaign to spread disinformation and interfere in the presidential election, with Mr. Biden as the primary target.
“We certainly have seen very active — very active — efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020,” Mr. Wray said, specifically “to both sow divisiveness and discord, and I think the intelligence community has assessed this publicly, to primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden in what the Russians see as a kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”
Mr. Wray condemned all acts of bloodshed but refrained from overemphasizing violence caused by far-left groups like Antifa, the loose movement that purports to be against fascism, which Mr. Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr have repeatedly blamed for unrest in American cities.
So the Russians are again doing what they did in 2016, spreading disinformation in favor of Trump. Doubtless they'll target white grievance, which adds to white supremacist violence.