Bryan Del Monte – How does election rhetoric affect America's reputation?

Political debates over election security don't just shape domestic politics—they can also influence America's standing around the world.

Bryan Del Monte, founder of Quiet Departure and former Department of Defense and Intelligence official, joins the show to discuss how election rhetoric impacts international confidence, investment, and America's global reputation. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey, welcome back to the Lions, Lice, and Show. So, like many of you, I watched Donald Trump last night. He had promised some bombshells, and I don't think they were as big as we thought they were going to be. But President Trump says Americans deserve to know where election systems are vulnerable. Did his speech last night restore confidence through transparency or simply reopen old wounds? I thought we'd put that first to Brian Del Monte, who's a former Department of Defense intelligence official and a political risk expert and founder of Quiet Departure. Brian, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Thanks for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

What did you make of last night's speech by the president and the things he decided to declassify so Americans can actually see the proof of what a lot of us have believed for the last six years?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Well, I think as you alluded to in your introduction, I don't think it was as uh revolutionary or um as big of a of a reveal as um some might have hoped. What the what the president said was shocking, right? He accused um China, Venezuela, and Iran essentially of interfering with U.S. elections. He then released a series of documents that he purported uh substantiated those claims. I didn't think so when I read those documents.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

You didn't think that they substantiated the claims?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

No, I don't. I mean, I I I read everything and I'm like, well, um there's very little in the intelligence, but um there's something genuinely new, perhaps, in the president's behavior. But the evidence doesn't establish a stolen election. It doesn't uh substantiate that China actually had an influence in our election. It suggests they may have wanted uh to influence it. It suggests they may have had the capability to, but it doesn't say they did or how they did.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

I guess what I'm wondering is how would you establish that? If you said they stole all this data, 220 million uh voter rolls, a voter uh registration piece of information. I assume that if somebody steals something like that, it's because they plan to use it for something. And and stealing voter information could be used for economic reasons, it could be used for a lot of things, but you might expect it first to be used to affect elections. If they had actually used the information in some way to affect elections through social media, through uh news coverage or anything else, how would you ever know?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Well, first, uh that's a great premise you have, and it's cogent and it's complete, but it's not consistent with the facts or what the president said. So, first, not all voter roles are, you know, hidden or somehow not available. Many voter roles across the United States are are available. Okay, and is information that can be downloaded. So to say that they were stolen, that that may be uh uh we're a little bit ahead of our headlights in in that kind of claim. So what what the president said uh he made an allegation about the um countries interfering with our elections. He then said the intelligence community attempted to keep it from me. That was his second bombshell allegation. And the evidence that I read doesn't give me a lot of support for either. Um the information I read said uh the Chinese may have wanted to play a role influencing our elections, that they might have had the capability that they were certainly probing U.S. systems and you know looking for vulnerabilities, but it's not the same as saying they interfered with the election. Um so so if the circumstance had been what you suggest, well, then that would be very serious.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah. I but I do see uh I saw evidence in the documents they talked about that indicated that there were times where, say, Christopher Ray would testify to Congress as head of the FBI, and he said, Well, you know, all these things are true, and we're not, you know, w we we don't have a problem with the election right now. And then within the FBI, there were efforts to pull back certain reports that contradicted what Ray said, and and the agency did that. And I find that concerning because they say, well, were they trying to hide this information? It appears that's exactly what they were doing, because they found breaches into our systems in 21 and 22. And the data released by Trump said that registered data covering people who were registered between 2014 and 22, about 40 million voters were out there. And so they did an investigation in Michigan in 2020, and they said uh there were 8,000 to 10,000 registration applications from one of the operations. But then it appeared that that report contradicted Ray, so the agency just said, let's pull that information back. We'll retrieve that report and not allow the public to see it. That sounds like our own government, elements of our government trying to hide information from the public, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Well, i sure. Again, if the situation was as you described it, then yes, the conclusion you want to reach would be logical. Let me just say, look, I think three things can be true at once. Okay, I think foreign governments can target the American political system. I think the intelligence community can make mistakes and deserve scrutiny, as well as the FBI can make mistakes and deserve scrutiny. And that the documents that were released still don't prove sweeping conspiracy against the American people or the president. So um let me though deal with uh a more um benign explanation for why uh a public official testifying before Congress may say one thing, yet evidence in the stream says something else. Yeah. There's a process that the intelligence community goes through. Um people walk into our embassies, people walk into FBI offices uh and say things they think to be true. And uh the FBI in the in the investigations that they do will hear things about other potential things going on. And there's a process to determine is that information credible and is that information relevant, and should we jump on it? That's true. And the sheer amount of information, yeah, and the sheer amount of information coming into the intelligence community is huge. I mean, let me ask uh your listeners this have you ever noticed we have a hard time telling you about what's about to happen before a catastrophe happens, and then six seconds after it happens, we can tell you the last dinner the guy had at the restaurant three blocks away. Good point. Intelligence is now why is that? Okay, it's not a failure of the system, it's a failure of you know, intelligence is difficult. It's a it's like it's like no, it's not, it's not, it's not nefarious. The people who work in our intelligence community want to protect the United States. They want to provide the uh information that is relevant to the president, okay. And the president said, look, they kept this from me, but there isn't evidence to suggest that that actually happened. That's also contra uh the mission and the incentives of these organizations who want to get it right. Okay, the problem is the sheer amount of information that comes in and connecting the dots. Okay, that's the real problem of the intelligence community.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

We that is true. That is Brian Del Monte. Mr. Del Monte, thank you very much for the time. Brian is a former Defense Department intelligence official and founder of Quiet Departure. Back in a moment, you've got the Lars Larson show.