Sean Spicer couldn't tell us Tuesday whether Donald Trump believes Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, but former Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson didn't mince words on the topic during a House Intelligence hearing Wednesday. Here’s a transcribed back and forth between Johnson and Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell:
Rep. Swalwell: Was our democracy attacked this last election?
Johnson: 'Yes.'
Swalwell: By who?
Johnson: "The Russian government."
Yet Trump isn’t sure, or at least he and his White House won’t say so publicly. In fact, Johnson testified Wednesday that Trump’s promotion last fall of the election’s vulnerability dissuaded him, at least in part, from making a more high-profile public case about Russia’s interference at the time. NPR’s Brian Naylor writes:
One of the candidates, Johnson said, not naming but clearly referring to Donald Trump, "was predicting that the election was going to be rigged," Johnson said, and so we were concerned that by making the statement, we might in and of itself be challenging the integrity of the election process."
Well, that ship has come and gone now. But over on the Senate side of Capitol Hill, current Homeland Security officials told the Intelligence panel that they are persisting with the same type of caution that proved completely ineffective last fall for Johnson. DHS officials said they have identified 21 states where voting systems were targeted by the Russians, though they still refuse to name those states.
Jeanette Manfra, acting director of DHS' national protection and programs directorate, told senators that DHS must "build trust" with the state and local agencies it supports and that releasing names or details about them would ruin that by embarrassing them.
Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., complained that the official work of investigating and explaining Russia's mischief last year was hamstrung by all the secrecy about what had been compromised.
"I understand the notion of victimization," he said. "But I do not believe our country is made safer by holding this information back from the American public. I have no interest in trying to embarrass any state, but we've seen this too long in cyber ... people try to sweep this under the rug and assuming it will all go away."
At the same Senate panel, cybersecurity expert and University of Michigan professor Alexander Halderman said that if we fail to act, it’s “only a matter of time until a major election is disrupted or stolen in a cyber attack.”
"My conclusion from that work is that our highly computerized election infrastructure is vulnerable to sabotage, and even to cyberattacks that could change votes," he warned. "These realities risk making our election results more difficult for the American people to trust. I know America's voting machines are vulnerable because my colleagues and I have hacked them."
Halderman also called paperless machines—the kind used by at least some or all counties in 14 different states—"obsolete."
Meanwhile state and local election officials remain both wary of federal help and yet hungry for clear direction.
Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, president-elect of the National Association of Secretaries of State, told the Senate panel that help from federal officials hadn't necessarily proven to be negative or positive. But ...
She and other state elections officials are frustrated by what they call a lack of clear guidance or information from the federal level and an absence of understanding by Washington about how elections practically work around the country.
Unfortunately, that help will have to come from the Department of Homeland Security which is now headed by Sec. John Kelly, who has proven himself to be more of a Trump stooge than anything.
Former DHS Sec. Johnson, who said he had originally considered counter-terrorism to be his chief objective at the agency, had some advice for his successor on cybersecurity:
"I would urge Sec. Kelly to make this one of his top one or two priorities."
Of course, Kelly is still working for a guy who can't admit that the Russians hacked the election and that it’s entirely possible that he never would have been elected without the helping hand of Vladimir Putin.
As Sen. Mark Warner said of the Russia hacking following the Senate hearing, “The one individual in America that still seems to not accept this basic fact is the president of the United States.”