EXCLUSIVE: Obama Never Told 21 States Russians Were Hacking Their Voting Systems
State election officials still don’t know which 21 of their jurisdictions Russian hackers targeted, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.
Secretaries of state — who are the top election officials in 40 states — told TheDCNF they were shocked to learn of the Russian hacking when Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials first divulged it at a June 21, 2017, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing. (RELATED: Obama Administration Never Warned State Election Officials Of Russian Hacking)
“We can’t find any secretaries of state who say they have been told they are part of this list of ‘targeted’ states.” said a spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), which is the oldest nonpartisan professional organization for public officials, representing top state election officials in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.
The testimony of Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity and communications at DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence stunned NAAS.
“We have evidence of election-related systems in 21 states that were targeted,” she said. (RELATED: Obama Knew In 2014 Of Russian Attempts To Disrupt Elections)
obama regime and Russians Cybersecurity Firm Kaspersky Sues US For Banning Its Products Russian Cybersecurity Firm Kaspersky Sues US For Banning Its Products
Russian Cybersecurity Firm Kaspersky Sues US For Banning Its Products
December 19, 2017
Eugene Kaspersky
Nigel Treblin / Getty Images
Kaspersky Lab is suing the US Department of Homeland Security for banning federal government agencies from using its products.
The ban, issued in September, was the culmination of months of speculation from officials in the US government that using Kaspersky was a security risk after national security officials said the Russian government had stolen hacking tools from the National Security Agency through Kaspersky software on a NSA employee’s home computer. The ban gave US agencies until Dec.12 to stop using the software.
Kaspersky is one of the world’s foremost cybersecurity companies and has long denied that it conspires with any nation except when a court orders it to do so in a criminal prosecution. But its ties to Russian intelligence – its founder, Eugene Kaspersky, was trained at a school run by the KGB spy agency during the Soviet era – have long been an for some US officials.
The lawsuit, announced Monday, charged that DHS never afforded the company the chance to rebut the claims against it. In July, the company claims in its lawsuit, Kaspersky offered to discuss how its products are used. DHS responded in August that they would “be in touch again shortly,” but didn’t respond before issuing the ban.
DHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kaspersky’s suit cites the Administrative Procedure Act, which allows individuals to sue the federal government if it decides a contract award without adequate evidence. “The APA provides a framework by which those theories can be pursued, but the company will have to substantiate them,” Ronald Levin, a professor at Washington University Law. told BuzzFeed News.
Complicating the issue is the difficulty in learning exactly what role Kaspersky software might have played in the pirating of NSA hacking tools. In November, an employee of NSA’s elite Tailored Operations Unit, Nghia Hoang Pho, pleaded guilty to taking such tools home and loading them onto his personal computer, which was running Kaspersky anti-virus software. The software detected the tools as a virus and transmitted them back to Kaspersky’s servers in Moscow for analysis, Kaspersky has said.
The Kaspersky suit cites DHS official Jeanette Manfra’s testimony in a Nov. 14 congressional hearing that she doesn’t have conclusive evidence that Kaspersky facilitated a breach of US government computers. But in May, the chiefs of the US’s top intelligence agencies, including the NSA, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, all said they would not personally use Kaspersky.
It’s unclear exactly how badly DHS’s decision has affected Kaspersky’s business. Eugene Kaspersky has described the company’s sales to the US government as “very few.” But competitors have seized on the ban as a selling point since September, and Kaspersky recently closed its suburban Washington, DC, office because, according to a company spokeswoman, “the opportunity for which the office was opened and staffed is no longer viable.”.
It’s also unclear whether Kaspersky still has plans to open offices in Toronto, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, a Republican from Vice President Mike Pence’s home state, said she was shocked to learn of the hacking during the hearing and incredulous that federal officials have provided no further information.
“Well it is extraordinary and is somewhat ridiculous,” Lawson said. “It’s frustration beyond belief. I have never heard from any secretaries of state and I believe that NASS has not heard either from any secretary that they have been told that their state was one the states that was targeted during the 2016 election,” she said.
“Here’s what I’m learning unless a secretary of state gets the proper clearance, I’m not sure we will ever find out if our state was mentioned,” Lawson said. She is president of NASS and co-chairwoman of the group’s election cybersecurity task force.
Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, who is a Democrat and president-elect of NASS, agreed with Lawson. “We were not notified. None of the states were notified,” he said.
“One of the reasons why they said they couldn’t tell us about the 21 states is because we didn’t have security clearances. Doesn’t it make sense that they might find a way to give us a security clearance so we can talk to each other about this?” Condos added.
A DHS spokesman confirmed to TheDCNF that state election officials were out of the loop when the Russians targeted them. “When we become aware of a potential victim, DHS notifies the owner or operator of the system, who may not necessarily be the secretary of state’s office,” the spokesman said.
Owners and operators are usually private vendors that maintain election registration lists, according to the DHS spokesman. Russian hackers never attacked actual tabulation systems but voter registration rolls, most of which are public and available for purchase.
“If a local election system is hacked, you should notify the state system, and you probably should be notifying all state systems to let them know this breach was made so we can all take action to prevent it from impacting us,” Condos said.
State election officials are also disturbed that former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson designated state election systems as “federal critical infrastructure” with no prior consultation. DHS officials informed the states the federal designation was being considered in August 2016. But Johnson made it official in January 2017 just weeks before the Obama administration ended.
Both Democrat and Republican secretaries of state have opposed the federal designation. Many see it as a power play to “nationalize” our election system, which is now run at the state and local level. They also charge federal officials are clueless about how state and local election systems operate.
“The disconnect is what we’ve been saying since last August that they need to understand how our system works before they start creating regulations to secure it,” Condos said.
“We plan to work with secretaries of state and senior election officials to determine how best to share this information, while protecting the integrity of investigations and the confidentiality of system owners,” the DHS spokesman told TheDCNF.
“As part of this effort, we have begun the process to grant security clearances in coordination with the National Association of Secretaries of State, and have made this a priority for the election sector,” the spokesman said.
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The Attkisson file
There is a lot of meat for conservatives to chew on in former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s memoir cum exposé Stonewalled: My Fight For Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation and Harassment in Obama’s Washington. It is easily one of the most important political books published last year.
One can infer from the subtitle of the book much of what Attkisson has on offer. One might not have guessed, however, that in Attkisson’s telling those “forces” in the book’s subtitle include the current head of CBS News. Attkisson adds a compelling inside/outside element to the story of her coverage of the Obama administration scandals around which the book is organized.
I have been puzzled by the dearth of attention the book has received in the conservative media, even following the filing of Attkisson’s lawsuit against the Obama administration earlier this month. In the lawsuit Attkisson and her family assert explosive claims against the Obama administration based on the monitoring of her computers as revealed in the book.
Seeking to interest readers in her story, I wrote a column on the book for NRO. My column is posted on the site this morning as “The Attkisson file.” My thanks to NRO associate editor Molly Powell for her thoughtful work on the draft I sent editor Rich Lowry to make it a stronger column. Please check it out if you have any interest in the subject. Loretta Lynch did a superb job of testifying this morning. She artfully ducked the few tough questions directed to her, while somehow managing to sound like the most accommodating nominee ever. Only Sen. Sessions laid a glove on her, in my opinion.
One can infer from the subtitle of the book much of what Attkisson has on offer. One might not have guessed, however, that in Attkisson’s telling those “forces” in the book’s subtitle include the current head of CBS News. Attkisson adds a compelling inside/outside element to the story of her coverage of the Obama administration scandals around which the book is organized.
I have been puzzled by the dearth of attention the book has received in the conservative media, even following the filing of Attkisson’s lawsuit against the Obama administration earlier this month. In the lawsuit Attkisson and her family assert explosive claims against the Obama administration based on the monitoring of her computers as revealed in the book.
Seeking to interest readers in her story, I wrote a column on the book for NRO. My column is posted on the site this morning as “The Attkisson file.” My thanks to NRO associate editor Molly Powell for her thoughtful work on the draft I sent editor Rich Lowry to make it a stronger column. Please check it out if you have any interest in the subject. Loretta Lynch did a superb job of testifying this morning. She artfully ducked the few tough questions directed to her, while somehow managing to sound like the most accommodating nominee ever. Only Sen. Sessions laid a glove on her, in my opinion.
1:42 Ted Cruz is up. Attorneys general have a long history of standing up to the president, Cruz says. But Eric Holder hasn’t upheld that tradition.
How would Lynch’s tenure differ from Holder’s, Cruz asks?
She regurgitates Cruz’s statement about the need for the AG to act in a fair way. How will she differ from Holder? She “will be Loretta Lynch.” It’s a perfectly tautological and vacuous answer.
She then reverts to her mantra — she looks forward to talking with Cruz about his concerns. Sure, she does.
1:46 Cruz turns specifically to immigration. Does Lynch agree with the OLC opinion affirming the legality of the executive amnesty? She says she doesn’t see amnesty being upheld in that opinion. She sees prioritization of prosecution resources, and finds it “reasonable.”
Cruz points out that the OLC operates as the official opinion of the DOJ. So does she agree with the analysis and would it have been her analysis?
Lynch won’t say. She filibusters, presumably hoping to run down the clock on Cruz.
Cruz quotes Obama’s 2011 statement that he can’t override Congress on immigration. Does Lynch agree with what Obama said then? Lynch ducks. She doesn’t know the context, she says.
As U.S. attorney, did Lynch ever carve out a class of offenders that she wouldn’t prosecute. Lynch hems and haws, but basically agrees that she never did.
1:52 Al Franken is now taking his turn. In keeping with his status as class clown, his first question is “how was lunch.” Lynch says it was great.
Everything seems to be great from Lynch’s perspective. She is proving to be the Ernie Banks of confirmation witnesses. It’s a beautiful day in the friendly confines of the Capitol. Let’s play two.
1:56 Franken claims that our prisons contain many people who shouldn’t be there, but should be in “mental health court” instead. Lynch doesn’t dispute this claim. She seems on board with, and indeed enthusiastic about, Franken’s quest to blur the lines of criminality through the wonders of therapy.
If this were a movie, I would say “this is where I came in.” Franken’s BS was all the rage when I studied criminal law in the early 1970s. It was only when such nonsense went out of fashion that we began to make headway in reducing crime.
2:02 It’s Jeff Flake’s turn. Can’t say I’m expecting much worthwhile from him.
Lynch assures Flake that her commitment to securing the border is firm. We can all sleep better at night now.
Flake is pressing Lynch about failure to carry through on an effective border control program in Yuma, Arizona (“Operation Streamline”). Is she committed to the program? Lynch says she’s committed to talking with Flake about his concerns.
It’s a beautiful day in the friendly confines…
2:13 Sen. Blumenthal is on the clock. I should get paid double for listening to this segment.
He commends Lynch for her “forthright and erudite” testimony. Lynch is doing a masterful job, but forthright and erudite she has not been.
Blumenthal thanks Lynch for her sympathy for veterans who commit crimes. He does so as the father of a vet who has served in a combat theater, and he lists all the veterans in Lynch’s family.
But wait! Didn’t Blumenthal himself serve in Vietnam? That’s what he once claimed, but it was a lie.
2:23 Sen. Vitter is up. He was an early skeptic of Lynch and criticized her for not answering his questions when they met in the office.
Lynch told Vitter she would get back to him. But yesterday he received a letter from her stiffing him on his questions. Accordingly, we should be very skeptical of her claim that she will discuss substantive issues with Republican Senators.
Lynch seems like Ernie Banks now, but I suspect that, as Attorney General, she’ll turn out more like her namesake, Marshawn.
Vitter insists that the executive amnesty, by granting work permits, goes beyond simple removal and prosecution issues. In other words, as Sen. Lee pointed out, it is more than an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Lynch filibusters.
Vitter, like Cruz, asks Lynch whether she agrees with the OLC opinion on amnesty. Again, she finds it “reasonable” but won’t answer the question of whether it’s correct.
There is no reason why Lynch shouldn’t answer this question. This isn’t a Supreme Court nominees declining to discuss a case he or she might have to decide. If these hearings are to have any meaning, the penalty for non-responsiveness on a key issue like this one should be a vote not to confirm.
Vitter asks for the statutory basis for having the decisions on deportation made by DHS when the statute says its to be made by DoJ. Lynch won’t answer.
Vitter turns to mandatory minimums. They are in the statute, so why shouldn’t they be enforced whether we agree with them or not? Lynch cites limited resources and the need to prioritize.
But, as Vitter says, this makes the mandatory minimums non-mandatory and allows bureaucrats to override Congress.
This is the defining characteristic of Holder’s lawless reign at DoJ. And in no instance today has Lynch shown any discomfort with it. Indeed, as just occurred in response to Vitter, she has embraced it.
How many Republican Senators will accept this lawlessness by voting to confirm Lynch? The answer, it appears, is more than enough to confirm Lynch.
Vitter won’t be among them. He’s probably been the second toughest questioner so far (behind only Ted Cruz).
2:37 Sen. Coons is now asking questions. Nothing but softballs questions and hackneyed answers so far.
Guess what. Lynch looks forward to talking with Senators about issues related to the Patriot Act.
Coons asserts that the criminal justice system is broken because blacks disproportionately are incarcerated — a non sequitur if ever there was one.
Lynch doesn’t question Coons’ assertion. We can assume that she will follow Eric Holder’s model and take a race-conscious approach to criminal justice. She likely will be a good General in the war on standards.
2:46 Sen. David Perdue is asking questions now. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in action.
He’s asking about a very interesting case, that of a Francois Holloway, a repeat carjacker who was convicted and lawfully sentenced under the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. Judge John Gleason, who has been described as a “defense lawyer in a robe,” made it his crusade years later to obtain leniency for Holloway, whom he had sentenced.
He sought Lynch’s help, asking her to permit Gleeson to reopen the matter to review, and presumably reduce, the sentence. To Lynch’s credit, she originally declined, but a year later changed her position. Perdue wants to know why.
Lynch responds that Holloway got a much tougher sentence than the guy who masterminded the crime (but that’s because Holloway rejected a plea deal). She also says she consulted with the victims before agreeing to Gleeson’s request. And she looked at the case under current DoJ standards which, Lynch says, are more favorable to Holloway.
I’m not sure that anything in this answer explains why she changed her mind. It sounds to me like Lynch simply caved to pressure from a judge that, as a prosecutor, she might have to deal with.
Bill Otis has written about the Holloway case. I will probably take a look at this matter in light of Lynch’s answer to Sen. Perdue’s question.
2:55 The Committee is in recess because there are no Senators present who haven’t questioned Lynch in the first round (only Sen. Tillis hasn’t had a turn, but he’s not present). The next round will begin soon, but I’m going to conclude my live-blogging for the day.
Unlike Ernie Banks, I’m not willing to “play two.’
New emails show IRS stalled criminal probe of targeting
Emails obtained by Judicial Watch
show that the IRS stalled a criminal investigation into its practice of
targeting conservative groups. IRS delayed granting permission to an
agency employee to meet with investigators, despite the employee’s
eagerness to testify.
The employee’s attorney expressed his frustration with the IRS’s delay to the Department of Justice on June 12, 2013, saying “we find it amazing that [IRS attorneys] didn’t immediately respond giving us the green light to meet with you.” The DOJ lawyer appeared to share the concern. He wrote back: “Let’s talk in a.m. if they don’t get back to you.”
Nonetheless, it was another month before the employee met with two Justice Department prosecutors, two FBI officials, and an investigator from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The meeting appears to have occurred on July 11.
Of the two Justice Department attorneys present, one apparently was from the Public Integrity Section and one was from the Civil Rights Division. The Public Integrity previously has been tied to an effort to work with the Obama IRS against the very groups and individuals critical of the Obama administration and the president’s reelection that the IRS has admitted to illicitly targeting.
As for the Civil Rights Division, it is an ultra-left-wing enclave within the liberal DOJ. Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote has slammed the Justice Department for refusing to meet with her about “targeting” complaint without the presence of an attorney from the Civil Rights Division. At the time, the Civil Rights Division was trying to block True the Vote from intervening in voter ID litigation.
Barbara Bosserman, an attorney at the Civil Rights Division, reportedly has taken a lead role in the IRS investigation at Justice. According to Federal Election Commission records, Bosserman contributed $6,750 to Obama’s campaigns and the DNC from 2004 to 2012. William J. Wilkins, the Chief Counsel for the IRS, was a former Democratic Senate staffer and a donor to Democratic candidates and committees. Wilkins is a political appointee.
The latest batch of emails obtained by Judicial Watch (it’s the second) is far from complete. The production consists of 34 pages of heavily redacted emails. DOJ admits that it reviewed 938 pages of responsive records related to this production. All told, the DOJ has reviewed 1,772 pages of records in this case, but only produced 36 heavily redacted pages.
Nonetheless, the newly released documents provide the first real glimpse into the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the IRS targeting scandal. The picture isn’t pretty. As Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton says:
The employee’s attorney expressed his frustration with the IRS’s delay to the Department of Justice on June 12, 2013, saying “we find it amazing that [IRS attorneys] didn’t immediately respond giving us the green light to meet with you.” The DOJ lawyer appeared to share the concern. He wrote back: “Let’s talk in a.m. if they don’t get back to you.”
Nonetheless, it was another month before the employee met with two Justice Department prosecutors, two FBI officials, and an investigator from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The meeting appears to have occurred on July 11.
Of the two Justice Department attorneys present, one apparently was from the Public Integrity Section and one was from the Civil Rights Division. The Public Integrity previously has been tied to an effort to work with the Obama IRS against the very groups and individuals critical of the Obama administration and the president’s reelection that the IRS has admitted to illicitly targeting.
As for the Civil Rights Division, it is an ultra-left-wing enclave within the liberal DOJ. Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote has slammed the Justice Department for refusing to meet with her about “targeting” complaint without the presence of an attorney from the Civil Rights Division. At the time, the Civil Rights Division was trying to block True the Vote from intervening in voter ID litigation.
Barbara Bosserman, an attorney at the Civil Rights Division, reportedly has taken a lead role in the IRS investigation at Justice. According to Federal Election Commission records, Bosserman contributed $6,750 to Obama’s campaigns and the DNC from 2004 to 2012. William J. Wilkins, the Chief Counsel for the IRS, was a former Democratic Senate staffer and a donor to Democratic candidates and committees. Wilkins is a political appointee.
The latest batch of emails obtained by Judicial Watch (it’s the second) is far from complete. The production consists of 34 pages of heavily redacted emails. DOJ admits that it reviewed 938 pages of responsive records related to this production. All told, the DOJ has reviewed 1,772 pages of records in this case, but only produced 36 heavily redacted pages.
Nonetheless, the newly released documents provide the first real glimpse into the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the IRS targeting scandal. The picture isn’t pretty. As Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton says:
These documents show that the Obama IRS Counsel’s office, run by an Obama political appointee, was stonewalling a federal criminal investigation. And only in the Holder Justice Department would it be deemed appropriate that the offices implicated in the IRS abuses should investigate the IRS abuses. . . .No wonder the House Oversight Committee plans to press on with its probe of this scandal.
This is an ugly mess and it is no surprise that, after nearly two years, the criminal investigation of the Obama IRS by its co-conspirators at the Obama Justice Department is widely acknowledged as a farce.
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