Russians 'Tried To Influence UK General Election' By Pushing Leaked US Trade Report Used By Jeremy Corbyn
Russians tried to influence the 2019 British general election by “amplifying” a leaked document on UK-US trade that ended up being highlighted by Jeremy Corbyn, the government has claimed.
Foreign secretary Dominic Raab said that the intelligence assessment was that “Russian actors” - a way of describing hostile hackers as opposed to Moscow’s intelligence agencies - had “almost certainly” sought to interfere by “amplifying” the documents online.
Former Labour leader Corbyn seized on the documents in December to claims that they proved that the Tories were hatching a trade deal with Donald Trump to “sell off” the NHS to American private health and drug firms.
He held a press conference to parade the leaked papers, having brandished redacted versions of them during a live TV debate days beforehand.
Uncensored versions of the document first appeared online on the Reddit website more than a month earlier, but initially gained very little attention.
However, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre - an offshoot of GCHQ- has assessed that “Russian actors” decided to spread the documents to a larger audience.
A criminal investigation is underway into how the papers were initially accessed, but that is unrelated to the dissemination of the documents later.
There is no suggestion that Labour was in any way involved in the original leak of the papers.
Labour said it condemned “any attempt by Russia, or any foreign power, to interfere in our country’s democratic processes” and pledged to work to protect the nation’s security.
The news came as intelligence agencies in the UK, US and Canada issued a joint statement revealing that hackers linked to the Russian intelligence services had tried to access coronavirus vaccine research in the three countries.
In a written statement to parliament Raab revealed that during the 2019 general election a cross-government “election security” cell was stood up to coordinate responses to threats and...
