Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday said he is not aware of any evidence showing that Russian hackers were able to change vote tallies in the 2016 election.
“I know of no evidence that, through cyberintrusions, votes were altered or suppressed in some way,” Johnson said in an open session of the House Intelligence Committee.
In response to a later question, Johnson said he does not know how many state voter databases were targeted by cyberattacks ahead of the presidential election. He said a “growing list” of states saw “scanning and probing activities around voter registration databases.”
Johnson cited “open source reporting” that systems in 39 states came under attack, a number Bloomberg reported in June.
“I don’t know the final count because I haven’t had access to the intel for the last five months,” Johnson said. “I’ve seen, open source, I think 39 states and I’m not in a position to agree or disagree.”
Fmr. DHS Sec. Johnson says, during the election, a growing list of states "saw scanning and probing around voter registration databases." pic.twitter.com/HhllR4dGOP
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 21, 2017
Hasn’t seen an audit, either. Because there wasn’t one.
Headline overstates his actual words.
You know, there’s little evidence that the Rosenberg spy ring, or other Soviet spy rings, speeded up the USSR’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. (Klaus Fuchs’ espionage in Britain was somewhat more helpful to them, but not decisive.) But that did not mean that Soviet espionage was unimportant. The vital fact about espionage is that it is tried, not whether it succeeds or not. That, among other things, is being lost in the way the investigations in Washington are proceeding.
There’s been a slow but orderly retreat from the initially cautious analysis of Russia’s success in disrupting last year’s election. We know the FBI director acted on information he knew was false, that Obama and Biden decided that speaking up publicly would actually aid the Russians (thanks, McConnell!), and that Russia attempted to hack at least thirty-nine state election systems - systems we know are comically insecure - with varying degrees of infiltration. The “vote tallies were not affected” line is the last order keeping events from devolving into a total rout.
(Of course we also have the current PotUS on tape requesting assistance from the Russians in hacking his opponent’s emails, but apparently that doesn’t matter.)
“I know of no evidence that, through cyber intrusions, votes were altered or suppressed in some way,” Johnson said in an open session of the House Intelligence Committee.