Does the Real Election Interference Involve the Democrats?

In May, RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen recounted the Obama administration’s long held propensities for election tampering, the latest effort being the DHS’s bid under former Secretary Jeh Johnson to infiltrate numerous state election voter databases during the 2016 election cycle.

Johnson testified last week before the Senate Intelligence Committee, however, that, even though he did not believe that “votes were altered or suppressed in some way,” his organization did not report on potential Russian hacking for the sake of non-partisanship.

David Warrington, RNLA Vice President for Election Education, highlights the Democratic Party’s herculean attempt during this hearing to scapegoat anyone else for its own illegal forays into elections:

Leaving aside for a minute that Russia ‘hacking’ the 2016 election is a wildly inaccurate portrayal of Russia's digital meddling — which to date are only allegations, nothing proven — there's likely another reason Johnson wasn't quick to cry foul: some of the known, legitimate attempts to hack into state election databases were perpetrated by Johnson's own organization, the Obama-led DHS.

DHS is not alone.  As we detailed Friday, even Democrats are raising questions of interference with the election regarding Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch. What does all this mean?  As Warrington concludes the continued fixation on Russia:

They are little more than an attempt to protect the previous administration from being exposed as election meddlers, albeit unsuccessful ones. But Hillary Clinton's leaked emails, which showed the Democratic National Committee colluding with her campaign to ensure she won the nomination over Bernie Sanders, have already proven that meddling in democratic processes is a strategy the left employs to win. 

Partisan politics in the end is driving this Russia hacking myth. And as Michael Thielen put it, “the reality is that there’s more evidence linking a US federal agency under Obama to state election hacking than there is linking Russia to the presidential election.”

Forget the Russians: According to Democrats, Microsoft Word Hacked into States

RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen wrote today about the election hacking story that has largely been ignored by the media:

Cybersecurity experts have confirmed that the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security attempted to hack into states’ voter registration systems in Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, and West Virginia. . . . Back in December of 2016, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp went public with findings from his office that a “third-party cybersecurity provider detected a ‘large unblocked scan event’ on the morning of Nov. 15, several days after the election.” He further alleged that the event began as far back as February of that year.  The “scan event” turned out to be one of 10 unsuccessful attempts to penetrate Kemp’s firewall, the same one protecting his election systems. 

What’s more, the hacking attempts occurred on key election dates and also happened to coincide with Kemp’s public statements pushing back against a DHS plan to designate state election systems “critical infrastructure.” . . . Kemp felt the effort was an intrusion into the sovereignty of state elections and said so publicly. The timeframe for the hacking attempts matched up with key dates in the 2016 electoral process and with Kemp’s pushback, including when he testified to Congress about election security and against the critical infrastructure designation. 

The Obama adminstration attempted to deny this but kept changing their story, at one point blaming an old version of Microsoft Word:  

Most damning? The cybersecurity firm discovered the hacking attempt originated not from some foreign country far away but from a workstation located under the umbrella of DHS . . . .  Federal agencies were not allowed to access state databases at the time without permission from the state. . . . All of this led to an investigation by the DHS Inspector General and a series of different explanations from DHS.  On December 9, DHS suggested the attempted hack originated with an employee’s misconfigured workstation.  On December 12, Sec. Johnson wrote that the attack was nothing more than a contractor accessing public portions of the Georgia Secretary of State’s website through “normal Microsoft Internet Explorer interaction” and that no scanning occurred. On December 16, DHS held a conference call with all state election officials and claimed the attack against Georgia was caused by a contract employee at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers using an older version of Microsoft Word that created an open option call against the Georgia firewall.  In other words, Microsoft Word did the hacking?  These excuses rank up there with the dog ate my homework excuse of a child. 

Kemp found these varying explanations unsatisfactory and wrote a letter to Trump asking for a review.  Likewise, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called for an investigation by the DHS Inspector General. 

While the media speculates and focuses on what influence Russia may or may not have had in the 2016 election (which is a serious problem worthy of inquiry, as Thielen notes), there are verified instances of attempted hacking of state election systems by the federal government under Obama that have been largely ignored.  The results of the congressional inquiry and DHS IG investigation remain to be seen, but we trust that DHS under Secretary Kelly and President Trump will respect state sovereignty and state power over administration of elections and not threaten the integrity of state election systems through unauthorized and unlawful attempts to hack into them.

ICYMI - DHS IP Address Attempted to Hack GA Secretary of State

Shortly after the election, there was an attempted hack of the Georgia Secretary of State's network, which was traced to the Department of Homeland Security:

Georgia’s top election official this week accused the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of trying to hack a computer network containing the state’s voter registration database. 

Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, demanded information about the alleged intrusion attempt in a letter sent Thursday to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. 

“On Nov. 15, an IP address associated with the Department of Homeland Security made an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the Georgia Secretary of State’s firewall. I am writing you to ask whether DHS was aware of this attempt and, if so, why DHS was attempting to breach our firewall,” Mr. Kemp wrote. 

“At no time has my office agreed to or permitted DHS to conduct penetration testing or security scans of our network,” he added. “Moreover, your department has not contacted my office since this unsuccessful incident to alert us of any security event that would require testing or scanning of our network. This is especially odd and concerning since I serve on the Election Cyber Security Working Group that your office created.”

Not having received any satisfactory answer or explanation from Obama's DHS, Sec. Kemp is now asking President-elect Trump to investigate when he takes office:

Kemp said he is not satisfied with the response from current DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.  

"Since contacting DHS with these concerns, we have collaborated with the agency and provided extensive, additional information," Kemp wrote. "Last night I received a letter from Secretary Johnson which lacked any specific information as to the attacks' intent or origin despite the fact that many questions remain unanswered." . . . 

DHS has offered several different, yet unconvincing, reasons for the attempted breach of Georgia's systems, leaving Sec. Kemp to wonder if his opposition to DHS overseeing elections was the reason for the attempted breach:

Kemp, who sits on a DHS-managed election cybersecurity working group, has also been the most vocal critic of the idea of adding elections to DHS’s portfolio of critical infrastructure systems. 

“The people of Georgia are very concerned about what exactly happened here, and they are demanding transparent and honest answers,” Kemp told Trump. “It appears that will not happen with the current administration.”

We trust that the Trump DHS under Secretary Kelly will take this breach seriously and investigate the source.