The ODNI has historically limited its role in election security to prevent abuse of power.
The ODNI assumed an election security role after the 2016 election. That year, the intelligence community learned that Russian government actors attempted to influence the presidential contest through cyber intrusions and influence campaigns. The intelligence community chose not to alert the public on the full scope of activities until after the election. Two years later, then–Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats created the role of the election threats executive to lead the collection, coordination, and integration of intelligence analysis for the entire intelligence community and, when appropriate, to provide transparency and declassify threat warnings to the public. The first three executives were senior career intelligence professionals.
Prudently, the ODNI intentionally limited its role in elections to focus on foreign threats rather than domestic ones. The agency had three mandates: provide policymakers with intelligence briefings; provide classified and public warnings of foreign threats to elections, as appropriate; and inform measures to disrupt and deter foreign influence actions and hold bad actors accountable. In short, when there is evidence of foreign election threats, the ODNI play an instrumental role in helping the FBI and DHS support states in protecting their election processes and infrastructure, but the agency has no direct role in protection efforts or in criminal investigations.
These limitations are especially important given the scope of power available to the ODNI. Executive Order 12333, issued by President Reagan and updated by President Bush, and the attorney general guidelines published in 2020 permit intelligence agencies to collect and retain Americans’ information under specified circumstances. In sensitive areas such as elections, these powers could be abused to pursue the president’s personal vendettas or to bolster debunked conspiracy theories. The potential for such abuse is one reason why, in 2022, Congress indicated through a nonbinding resolution that intelligence agencies should not collect or analyze information pertaining solely to Americans without a connection to a foreign nexus.
It is critical that the ODNI’s authority in matters of election security be carefully limited. The agency should involve itself only if it has concrete evidence of foreign influence, and it should not take action for the purpose of finding such evidence, as it purportedly did under Gabbard.
The ODNI has overstepped its election security role under Trump.
In a departure from past practice, in 2025 and 2026, the ODNI involved itself in two domestic election matters: the acquisition of voting machines from Puerto Rico and the FBI’s February raid in Fulton County, Georgia. In both instances, the agency failed to provide evidence of a foreign nexus that would justify its participation.
Gabbard testified to Congress that her office obtained Puerto Rico’s voting machines at the request of the U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico, W. Stephen Muldrow, who has been a key promoter of a repeatedly debunked claim that Venezuela hacked Dominion voting machines in 2020. This conspiracy theory reportedly may have motivated the acquisition (Puerto Rico uses systems by Liberty Vote, formerly Dominion, for its elections), although an ODNI official denied that the agency was searching for evidence of Venezuelan meddling and maintained that it was only engaged in a “standard practice in forensic analysis.” However, the ODNI lacks the expertise for such an analysis, and it hired and subsequently fired outside company Mojave Research after the contractor’s analysis reportedly did not find evidence of foreign tampering. According to press reports, Paul McNamara, an ODNI official and the head of the Directors Initiatives Group, worked with Kurt Olsen (who was then Trump’s director of election security and integrity) to try to ban the use of Dominion voting machines. Again, the ODNI has not provided evidence of a foreign nexus that would justify its role in such conversations.
Beyond the absence of a foreign nexus that might place the voting machine acquisition within the agency’s purview, the ODNI is not the appropriate entity to examine election equipment for security vulnerabilities. The Election Assistance Commission is responsible for overseeing the testing and certification of voting systems, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is the lead federal agency for protecting election infrastructure — though neither entity has the authority to regulate or seize voting systems. The FBI is responsible for investigating criminal breaches of critical infrastructure. The ODNI has neither the statutory authority nor the expertise for this work.
Separately, Gabbard attended an FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia, during which federal agents seized ballots, tabulator tapes, and other election materials from the 2020 election. Gabbard said her presence was specifically requested by Trump and suggested she was there to determine whether voting systems could be exploited by foreign adversaries, flipping the precedent that a foreign nexus be identified before ODNI action. The affidavit that the Justice Department filed to justify the raid did not mention a foreign nexus, the FBI has not provided the ODNI or the public with information indicating a reasonable suspicion of foreign involvement in Georgia’s election infrastructure, and members of Congress have not been notified of a foreign cyber intrusion or campaign targeting the integrity of Georgia’s 2020 election administration, as federal law would require.
Under Gabbard, the ODNI appears to have bypassed its prior limitations on its domestic involvement, launching or participating in investigations to find evidence of foreign interference elections rather than because of such evidence. Even as the agency abuses its mandate to chase debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, it is failing to perform its responsibilities to help states protect future elections from threats of foreign interference. Reflecting the agency’s apparent prioritized involvement in law enforcement operations over its statutory intelligence role, Gabbard appointed the first former federal law enforcement officer as the election threats executive instead of a career intelligence official.
Congress must rein in the ODNI’s involvement in elections.
President Trump has suggested that he wants the ODNI to continue and expand its involvement in domestic election matters. After selecting Pulte as acting director, he told reporters that “you may find out some things about the rigged elections.”
Given the ODNI’s recent pattern of overstepping authority to investigate elections under Gabbard, and President Trump’s expectation for the role, Congress must reassert itself to prevent further damage to American democracy. Among other actions, Congress can leverage its power of the purse to demand transparency and accountability with respect to the agency’s involvement in domestic election matters and restrict funding for actions that fall outside the agency’s intended narrow scope in this space.
Congress can also utilize future oversight and nomination hearings to question senior ODNI officials, including those who served in the Director’s Initiatives Group, about election-related actions they have authorized or taken, as well as the underlying intelligence reports justifying their decisions. Clayton’s nomination hearing also provides Congress the opportunity to question him under oath and secure commitments from him to avoid abuses of power.
Finally, Congress should codify its 2022 nonbinding resolution to formally restrict the ODNI’s ability to engage in domestic intelligence activities without sufficient evidence that a foreign nexus exists or without an FBI request to assist with a predicated investigation into illegal activities of foreign persons or entities. This would prevent the ODNI from acting independently to pursue discredited conspiracy theories and require it to act based on facts.
With the ODNI dismantling its capacity to monitor foreign influence in American elections and shifting its attention away from informing deterrence measures to prevent such influence, election officials can no longer count on the agency to be a partner in securing election infrastructure. But at the very least, Congress can — and must — assert itself to ensure the agency is not actively working against these officials.
