It wouldn't be a US election without some interference from Russia.

This time around, it looks like they're spreading the love to both sides of the ticket.

Alex Ward has been following the story for Vox.

The story starts on February 13th.

That's when intelligence officials decided to brief House lawmakers to tell them that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign

and that their preference might be, believe it or not, the president, Donald Trump.

Now, the person who gave the briefing as someone named Shelby Pearson

and aid to the Director of National Intelligence, Joseph McGuire.

And I should mention that when I spoke to a Democratic lawmaker who was in Pearson's briefing,

this lawmaker told me that the evidence that at least the Russian side of preference for Trump was, quote unquote, very compelling.

Now, what that means is similar to what happened in around 2016, which was when Russian hackers were trying to use social media tools,

Facebook, Twitter, etc, to influence the election in Trump's favor by sewing racial divisions,

by throwing anti-hillary Clinton rallies, etc.

So using very likely similar methods to help Trump defeat whoever the Democratic contender will be in 2020,

which brings us to another part of Pearson's briefing, which is she says the Russians are also trying to help out the campaign

of the Democratic frontrunner, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Well, we, it was not clear what role they're going to play.

We were told that Russia and maybe other countries are going to get involved in this campaign.

And look, here's the message to Russia.

Stay out of American elections.

So it's worth noting that Trump was not aware of this briefing.

In fact, he learned about it from Republicans who are inside and we're hearing the intelligence.

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