The heads of federal security agencies insist they are taking foreign threats to U.S. elections seriously, and are working with all the states and territories to protect the integrity of the 2020 vote, calling it a “top priority of the United States government.”

In a joint statement issued Tuesday while Americans cast ballots in an offyear election, Attorney General William Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, FBI Director Christopher Wray, outgoing acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan and other agency chiefs vowed “to defend against any threats to our democracy.”

And they identified the sources of those likely threats: “Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions.”

The statement declared that “In an unprecedented level of coordination, the U.S. government is working with all 50 states and U.S. territories, local officials, and private sector partners to identify threats, broadly share information, and protect the democratic process.”

“The announcement comes as House Democrats probe whether President Trump pressed Ukraine to interfere in next year’s election by asking the nation’s leader to investigate his potential 2020 opponent former Vice President Joe Biden and his son,” Axios says.

“Election security has been a point of contention in Washington since 2016 when Russia meddled in the presidential race to benefit President Trump,” says The Hill. “It was later revealed that Moscow targeted election systems in all 50 states, though no evidence emerged that any [votes] were actually changed.”

During Congressional testimony on his investigation of Russian election interference in 2016, then-special counsel Robert Mueller warned that “many more countries are developing capabilities to replicate what the Russians have done …. They are doing it as we sit here and they expect to do it during the next [2020] campaign.”

That theme was echoed in Tuesday’s joint security statement:

“Our adversaries want to undermine our democratic institutions, influence public sentiment, and affect government policies … through a variety of means, including social media campaigns, directing disinformation operations, or conducting disruptive or destructive cyberattacks on state and local infrastructure.”

Yet — ironically — last month Barr’s Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into the FBI’s Russia probe as led by Mueller. The FBI works under Barr’s direction, so in essence the Justice Department is investigating itself.

When the nature of this investigation-of-an-investigation was revealed, the New York Times noted that it was “likely to raise alarms” that the president was using Justice “to go after his perceived enemies.”