Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi, and Rick Newman discuss worries over foreign interference in the Presidential Election.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: There are new worries this morning over foreign interference in the presidential election. Federal officials say Iran is already trying to meddle and was behind a series of threatening emails sent to Democratic voters. And the announcement from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe came just hours before the next presidential debate.

JOHN RATCLIFFE: These actions are desperate attempts by desperate adversaries. Even if the adversaries pursue further attempts to intimidate or attempt to undermine voter confidence know that our election systems are resilient. And you can be confident your votes are secure.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Senior columnist Rick Newman joining us now. So, Rick, first it's Russia, now it's Iran. Is this the nightmare scenario that everybody was worrying about?

RICK NEWMAN: I don't think it's quite the nightmare scenario because we're detecting it. I mean, this tactic was starting to get attention in the last few days people put it saying online, on Twitter, and elsewhere they were getting threatening emails and text messages saying that whoever was getting in contact with them had all their contact information, basically knew where they lived, and was going to come after them unless they voted for Trump. So this got exposed pretty quickly. And now we have the government officials, as you just mentioned, saying Iran was behind it. I think the nightmare scenario would be if this type of thing were going on and nobody was aware of it or doing anything about it. So I mean, there are clearly external threats to the US election. But I think the big difference between now and 2016 is we're pretty aware of it, and we're on guard and noticing and doing stuff when these threats materialize.

BRIAN SOZZI: Rick, how much influence can these foreign governments have on the election?

RICK NEWMAN: Great question, Brian. So what we probably will not really know the answer to is if did anybody who got these threatening emails, did it change their behavior at all? Did it persuade them to change their vote or not to vote? I would guess not given that this has been exposed-- this whole story here, who's behind it has been exposed pretty quickly. But again the question is what is going on, that we don't know about, that might be doing one of two things. Either persuading people to change their vote, or I think what is more likely may be persuading people not to vote at all, voter suppression. That was actually a fairly big deal in 2016.