FBI warns of Russia meddling in 2020 race

The FBI director warned anew on Friday about Russia's continued meddling in US elections, calling it a "significant counterintelligence threat." The bureau has shifted additional agents and analysts to shore up defences against foreign interference, according to a senior FBI official, reports The New York Times.

The Trump administration has come to see that Russia's influence operations have morphed into a persistent threat. The FBI, the intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have made permanent the task forces they created to confront 2018 midterm election interference, senior US national security officials said.

"We recognise that our adversaries are going to keep adapting and upping their game," Christopher A Wray, the FBI director, said Friday in a speech in Washington, citing the presence of Russian intelligence officers in the United States and the Kremlin's record of malign influence operations.

"So we are very much viewing 2018 as just kind of a dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020," he said.

Wray's warnings came after the report by special counsel Robert Mueller laid out in hundreds of pages of detail the interference and influence campaign carried out by Russian operatives in the 2016 election.