The ongoing saga of Russia's hacking of Florida elections systems is back in the news. The new report on Russia's interference in the 2016 election from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which contains the blockbuster news that all 50 states were targeted by the Russians, also suggests that four Florida counties were infiltrated, as opposed to the two that were revealed earlier this spring in former special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
Earlier in the year, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who is on the SSCI, confirmed that two counties were hacked. It seems that Rubio would be in a place to know that it wasn't two, it was four, since he's on the committee that discovered that, but maybe he was too busy finding Bible verses to tweet out every day to pay attention to what Russia did to his state. It's not just Rubio, though. Then-governor and now-Sen. Rick Scott insists that, while the "report says the feds repeatedly warned the state about potential hacks," he knew nothing about it at the time and didn't find out about it until he went to the Senate. That seems, shall we say, unlikely.
He remains unworried, it appears. He told Chuck Todd on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that he hadn't read the SSCI report. He continues to imply that Russia infiltrating Florida county voter systems in an election year was not a thing, which was apparently the official line of his administration as governor. While "evidence mounted in 2018 that Russia had hacked into local election offices […] Scott's administration doubled down that hacking didn't take place in Florida—including in a conference call with Senate Intelligence Committee staff."
Florida is an extremely target-rich state for Russia in an election, and you can bet your bloomers it remains a target for 2020. Scott and Rubio should be spending every day pressuring Mitch McConnell to allow the Senate to take up legislation to combat interference, but they're not. Meanwhile, McConnell is whining on the Senate floor about people being mean to him because he's helping Russia.
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