That strategy's failing to secure Trump's reelection so far, so the last three paragraphs below discuss possible other moves Russia may plan.
Sen. Blumenthal's been warning for years now of Russian war on our democracy that senate Republicans have been mostly keeping classified. This is the kind of thing we can know, not what has our Democratic senators exiting briefings grim and appalled.
Election 2020: Russia Cares, China Doesn’t
Foreign influence: What America should worry about this year and next
Foreign Policy Research Institute, July 15, 2020, Post by Clint Watts
... However, the claim of Chinese election interference and subsequent focus on China in 2020 is a distraction from Russian election interference, which remains a clear and present danger to American democracy. In short, when it comes to November’s election, Russia cares and China doesn’t.
Facebook takedowns of the Kremlin’s troll farm in 2019 showed Russian content promoting President Trump, denigrating Biden and elevating Sanders. ... But the polls don’t look good for President Trump at the moment, and a Biden victory will most assuredly result in backlash toward Russia. ... Despite the Kremlin’s infiltration into the left and right of American politics,
there’s so much American-made disinformation this summer it’s been difficult for Putin’s minions to break through the noise. Fake news alone may not produce a meaningful impact on November’s outcome. This leaves but two options: hacking and subversion. ...
The Kremlin’s more appealing strategy appears to be the pursuit and sustained
subversion of the upcoming election and American democracy as a whole. On the propaganda and disinformation front, they’ve already ramped up predictions of widespread election rigging and fraud via mail-in balloting, building on the election rigging narratives they’ve promoted since the Iowa caucuses. GRU hackers might, like 2016, take shots at voter rolls and election machines, but this seems less likely in the face of an American cyber response this time around.
This leaves Election Day. If the polls aren’t close, and a Biden victory seems likely, the Kremlin could get really evil. ... Russia could conduct pin-prick
hacks in key battleground states to muddy the voting results either at polling places or amongst reporting media outlets. Maybe shut off the power, disabling poll sites in key battleground states. Simultaneously, they could instigate witting and unwitting allies in America to storm polling places, incite violence or contest election results—Kremlin operatives were connected to a similar scenario during Montenegro’s 2016 parliamentary election. ... encourage President Trump to remain in the White House post-inauguration ... Kremlin trolls would amplify all such chaos on social media and confuse the American public, helping to shatter voter confidence in the true outcome of the election.
For Russia, this would be a bold maneuver, one that would necessitate an American response that could be very costly over the long term. But Putin might feel just emboldened enough to pursue it, depending on a mix of domestic and international factors. In the latter doomsday scenario, if 2020 goes like 2016, we should watch for the Kremlin to signal its chosen course of action in early October, roughly a month before votes are cast. ...
https://www.fpri.org/fie/election-2020-russia-china/
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