Manafort Trial Not About Trump or Russian Interference in 2016 Election

The trial of Paul Manafort has been frequently in the news the past few weeks, and to listen to the mainstream media, it would appear that the trial is about Mr. Manafort's crimes on behalf of President Trump during his brief time with the Trump campaign in 2016.  But as Hans von Spakovsky pointed out, the trial has nothing to do with President Trump, the Trump campaign, or alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election:

But when it comes to the mandate given to Mueller on May 17, 2017, we’ve learned absolutely nothing. Mueller was charged with investigating “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” 

But neither Gates nor any other witness at the Manafort trial has testified about the Russian election interference or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign – or Trump himself – with the Russians. . . . All of the testimony at the Manafort trial has addressed events that occurred long before Manafort went to work for 2016 Trump campaign. The testimony has focused on Manafort’s and Gates’s activities as alleged “unregistered agents” representing the Ukrainian government starting in 2006. 

It would be absurd to argue that Manafort’s other clients in the 12 years since then are somehow to blame for any criminal activity he may have engaged in – and prosecutors aren’t even trying to point the finger at President Trump for these activities.

As Mr. von Spakovsky describes, the only connection between President Trump and Mr. Manafort's alleged misdeeds is how President Trump's opponents will try to attack him through his brief association with Mr. Manafort: 

If Manafort is found guilty of tax evasion and bank fraud, some will try to use his very brief association with the Trump campaign to tar the president. But such criticism would ignore two crucial facts. 

First, presidential campaigns are not law enforcement agencies. They have neither the capacity nor the resources to do detailed background investigations on the thousands of individuals who volunteer to work with a campaign. 

Second, Manafort appeared to be a successful, ethical businessman. Even the government – including the IRS, the FBI and our intelligence agencies – had no idea that he was allegedly engaging in any wrongdoing for a foreign government through an elaborate scheme of offshore bank accounts and shell companies, until Mueller’s office started investigating him. 

While the trial of Mr. Manafort is rife with political overtones, it is important that he not only receives a fair trial but also that the coverage of any evidence presented and the eventual verdict is accurate and not used as a political weapon through distorting the subject matter of the trial.

ICYMI: Former Obama Official Admits the Obama Administration Is at Fault for Russian Meddling

As Trey Gowdy points out there is zero evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, an Obama Administration official last week testified that they knew of attempted Russian meddling and were told to “stand down” and not try to stop it (emphasis added) :

The Obama White House’s chief cyber official testified Wednesday that proposals he was developing to counter Russia’s attack on the U.S. presidential election were put on a “back burner” after he was ordered to “stand down” his efforts in the summer of 2016.

The startling admission has largely been ignored by the media.   Monica Crowley lays out a case for why the Obama Administration stood down in light of Russian meddling:

Long before the 2016 election, when Donald Trump was a mere private citizen, Russia was engaged in widespread cyber-aggression against the United States. Moscow racheted up those attacks during the campaign. And yet, despite knowledge of the ongoing cyberwarfare, the president at the time, Barack Obama, and his intelligence chiefs — John Brennan at the CIA, James Clapper at National Intelligence, James Comey and his predecessor, Robert Mueller, at the FBI — reportedly didn’t lift a finger to stop it.

Why? Because the Obama administration was obsessed with protecting its bigger agenda: namely, closing and implementing the Iran nuclear deal and trying to save their collapsed Russian “reset.” Calling Russia on its malign cyber activity would have imperiled both initiatives, so Obama and his intel team apparently chose to ignore it, even as it escalated. 

Regardless of the reason, the Obama Administration response to Russian meddling is extremely problematic.  This should be a much bigger story than the endless focus on collusion, on which Trey Gowdy notes “he has yet to see a 'scintilla' of evidence showing that there was coordination between the two sides.”

When It Comes to Protecting Our Elections from Cybersecurity Threats, States Know What They’re Doing

Tom Spencer has an article at the Daily Signal that makes a great point: “When It Comes to Protecting Our Elections, States Know What They’re Doing:”. While some have been screaming the 2016 election was hacked, the reality is that not a single vote was hacked and the states are doing a great job of protecting the security of elections from hacking. The states running elections is a good thing for cybersecurity as Tom explains:

Our federalist structure, which gives states the primary control and responsibility for election administration, is the best defense against the hacking of an election. Our decentralized system consists of thousands of different jurisdictions, which use different procedures, equipment, servers, vendors, and locations for data at every step of the election process, from voter registration to the final certification of results. Federalizing the administration of elections would remove this vital safeguard.

Not only is the diversity of state systems helping preventing hacking, the states are doing a better job than the Federal Government:

States and localities around the country are experts in election administration and have been thinking about and protecting the security of our election system long before it ever entered the national spotlight. And the federal government is no bastion of cybersecurity, as demonstrated by the fact that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was hacked over 200 times.

The sad fact is the real purpose of some promoting the false narrative that states were hacked is not really about cybersecurity but undermining the 2016 election and ironically helping Russia:

In a sense, Russia is winning without “firing a shot,” as the myth of their election hacking has undermined confidence in the 2016 election. Those who wish to sow discord in the U.S., like Russia, have found reliable allies in politicians, pundits, and computer scientists who are eager to create a centralized election administration system that is far easier to hack.

This is far worse than simply casting doubt on our election systems and election results. Rather, it creates the potential for real harm to our election administration systems while ignoring the efforts of hardworking election officials across the country.

Let the states continue to run elections.  They have done a better job at cybersecurity than the Federal Government.

DHS Responds to Media's Sensationalism on Russian Election Interference

Last week, NBC News ran a "news" story that was picked up by other outlets about how the Russians had penetrated U.S. voter systems.  The only problem?  This "news" was released last summer, when National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) Assistant Secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications Jeanette Manfra testified before Congress about attempts to access state voter registration systems.  Today, Ms. Manfra issued an official statement rebuking NBC News' misleading reporting:

“Recent NBC reporting has misrepresented facts and confused the public with regard to Department of Homeland Security and state and local government efforts to combat election hacking. First off, let me be clear: we have no evidence – old or new - that any votes in the 2016 elections were manipulated by Russian hackers. NBC News continues to falsely report my recent comments on attempted election hacking – which clearly mirror my testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last summer – as some kind of “breaking news,” incorrectly claiming a shift in the administration’s position on cyber threats. As I said eight months ago, a number of states were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure. In the majority of cases, only preparatory activity like scanning was observed, while in a small number of cases, actors were able to access the system but we have no evidence votes were changed or otherwise impacted. 

"NBC’s irresponsible reporting, which is being roundly criticized elsewhere in the media and by security experts alike, undermines the ability of the Department of Homeland Security, our partners at the Election Assistance Commission, and state and local officials across the nation to do our incredibly important jobs. While we’ll continue our part to educate NBC and others on the threat, more importantly, the Department of Homeland Security and our state and local partners will continue our mission to secure the nation’s election systems. 

"To our state and local partners in the election community: there’s no question we’re making real and meaningful progress together. States will do their part in how they responsibly manage and implement secure voting processes. For our part, we’re going to continue to support with risk and vulnerability assessments, offer cyber hygiene scans, provide real-time threat intel feeds, issue security clearances to state officials, partner on incident response planning, and deliver cybersecurity training. The list goes on of how we’re leaning forward and helping our partners in the election community. We will not stop, and will stand by our partners to protect our nation’s election infrastructure and ensure that all Americans can have confidence in our democratic elections.”

Similarly, DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton tweeted:

The repeated inaccurate reporting by @NBCNews that government officials stand idly by is a disservice to every state and local election official across this great nation.

The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) both issued statements correcting the facts of the "Russian hacking" narrative.

The facts are worth repeating here, given that the media wishes to newly sensationalize this story, perhaps fearing that the "Russians stole the election" narrative is collapsing.  1. There is no evidence that any votes were changed or even that any vote tallying systems were accessed.  2. There were scans or attempted hacks of 21 state systems, some of which were not even voter registration systems but other state systems like Department of Transportation systems.  3. Only one state voter registration system was accessed, that of Illinois, and no records were changed.  

As all these people and organizations point out, there are real cybersecurity concerns facing election officials across the country, and election officials are working hard to secure their systems against the latest threats.  The media is quick to sensationalize the issue, such as when DEF CON's efforts to hack electronic voting machines was major news last year, in the interest of clicks and page views, but America is ill-served by the "Russian hacking" narrative.  It feeds liberals' anti-speech agenda, undermines confidence in our election system (which, despite the threats, is remarkably secure), and ignores the hard work that election officials are doing to ensure that our elections are secure.

Liberals Want to Use Russian Ads as an Excuse for Broad Internet Speech Regulation

David Keating, President of the Institute for Free Speech, and RNLA member Paul Jossey wrote in The Hill about how liberals and Democrats are using Facebook advertisements purchased by Russian agents as an excuse to regulate the online political speech of Americans.  First, they pointed out the narrow scope of the Russian ad problem:

As a practical matter, the Russian ads appear to have as much substance as spitting in the ocean. Estimates indicate the ads cost $150,000, and over half was spent after the election. By comparison, the money spent in the 2016 election in support of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was over 16,000 times more than the money Russians spent on ads. At most, only four percent of the nation’s voting age population saw one of the Facebook ads at issue. . . . [M]any of the ads occurred in 2015. Importantly, few even mentioned federal candidates. . . . 

Yet, despite their narrow audience and scope and no evidence of the ads having any impact on Americans' voting decisions, liberals are rushing to use them as an excuse to regulate speech:

Various interests have seized on Russian chicanery to push “reforms” lacking priority in less neurotic times. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) sent a “Dear Colleague” letter seeking new rules for online ads. The resulting bill would burden internet speech with suffocating rules, even possibly banning some forms of online speech. Instead of hitting the Russians, the bill instead targets American speech, press and assembly rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. In short, despite the dearth of candidate references in the Russian ads, there is already a rush to chill the world’s most dynamic speech forum. 

After pointing out the sheer impracticality of any rule against foreign "influence" in our world with instant global communications, Mr. Keating and Mr. Jossey describe the real danger here -- government pressure to suppress certain speech:

The Washington Post reported that President Obama confabbed with Zuckerberg to ensure people on Facebook saw only legitimate news sources. The head of the federal government asking a media company to censor unwanted speech is frightening. Facebook says, “We share the values of free speech, that when the right to speech is censored or restricted for any of us, it diminishes the rights to speech for all of us.” 

But when government officials pressure it and other online outlets to police political speech, censorship risks skyrocket. The government should focus on ensuring that our voting machinery is safe from foreign hackers. Protection is also needed to prevent foreign agents from stealing internal candidate campaign communications. But when the issue is speech, we must exercise great caution lest zeal to curb foreign influence instead damages our own free speech rights. 

Lawmakers should exercise caution when considering any rule that limits speech or creates new regulations of speech, and any response to the limited (and quite frankly, incompetent) attempts by Russian agents to influence public opinion last year should be very narrow, targeted specifically to foreign speech, and specifically exempt speech by American citizens.  Any other internet speech regulation would be unconstitutional, in addition to being a bad idea.  Fortunately, Republicans in Congress and at the FEC understand this well.  As Mr. Keating and Mr. Jossey quite correctly point out, American citizens are the ones whose rights are taken away when speech is regulated.  

Rush to Regulate Foreign Speech Risks China-Like Censorship

RNLA member Eric Wang wrote in USA Today how the rush to regulate foreign speech on American political and policy issues will inevitably stifle American speech, pointing first to the example of China:

Recent revelations that Russian interests used social media to interfere with the 2016 American election campaign have sent lawmakers scurrying to respond. China’s “Great Firewall” offers one possible model for securing our democracy. . . . China censors any agitators, foreign or domestic, on social media. Politically sensitive topics like Tibetan self-determination, the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, or resistance against the Communist Party are off-limits. Of course, the Great Firewall also completely blocks access to Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of other websites. . . . Emulating China’s disregard for free speech may seem like mere satire for Americans. . . . But recent calls to regulate online political speech by foreign interests directed at Americans seem to articulate no bounds. There is a real risk that a rush to regulate will threaten basic civil liberties. . . .

As Mr. Wang points out, the frightening example of China shows that control of the internet almost inevitably leads to censorship.  Even if American citizens' right to speak is not curtailed, their right to listen would be:

Any regulation of speech about political issues by foreigners could end up entangling U.S. citizens. . . . Even if we could use technology, such as blocking overseas Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, to prevent only foreign nationals from influencing us, this would still limit Americans’ First Amendment rights. As the Supreme Court has held, the right to speak also involves the right to listen.

Mr. Wang includes some interesting examples of the various ways foreign actors seek to influence opinion in the U.S. and concludes by pointing out that foreign attempts at influence are inevitable and certainly not new:

Except in the most closed societies, speech has always seeped across national borders. In an irony befitting today’s topsy-turvy politics, Democrats now decry Russia’s attempts to aid Trump last year. But last year, Republicans condemned foreign leaders who urged Americans to reject Trump. Look at history as well. The book “Democracy in America” is one of the most influential tracts on our political system, and remains required reading in American university political science courses today. It was written, of course, by Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman. By regulating Americans’ access to foreign speech about our politics, we risk becoming a “hermit kingdom.” 

All this is not to diminish the threat of foreign interference in our democracy. But First Amendment rights, once curtailed, are not easily restored. Therefore, we must carefully consider how we handle this issue. Rushing to restrict Americans’ political freedoms in the name of curbing foreigners’ political speech would play right into Russia’s hands.

As we have been discussing frequently in the past few weeks, while we may resent foreign attempts to influence our political process, regulating and restricting more than is already done in the law risks stifling speech by American citizens on important political and policy issues and isolating the U.S. internationally in a way that is unthinkable in a modern free society.

Weintraub Uses Russian Meddling As Excuse To Restrict Internet Speech

RNLA Vice President for Election Education David Warrington wrote today in the Daily Caller about how Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, like other Democrats and liberals, is using the alleged interference of Russia in last year's election as an excuse to regulate political speech.  Mr. Warrington explained how Commissioner Weintraub's statements in a recent FEC meeting showed her political savvy and intent to regulate internet speech:

Weintraub’s most recent choice of words is akin to the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent.  Rather than lead with what she actually wants – full regulation of speech on the Internet – she was careful to open her conversation without a specific proposal.  She knows the public backlash her fellow traveler former FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel encountered after she voted to regulate YouTube videos disseminated for free accompanied by a clarion call for the FEC to change its restrained approach to political speech on the Internet. 

That was a big mistake, substantively and politically. . . . Weintraub is more slippery than Ravel.  Where Ravel would walk off a political plank, Weintraub knows how to be politically expedient above all else.  For example, pining for support of Senator Schumer’s law firm to keep her post (she’s 16 years into a six-year term and wants to stay), she recently broke with reformers in voting to greenlight a Democrat group’s online fundraising application.  That vote earned her rebukes from reformers, but might have won her quid pro quo political support to stay on the FEC a little while longer. . . . But Weintraub’s regulatory plans for the Internet have been just as clear as Ravel’s in a series of votes in FEC regulatory actions. . . .

Unfortunately, while foreign influence is the excuse for the calls for increased regulation, the speech that will actually be regulated is political speech by American citizens: 

Weintraub said she will start her attack on online free speech small by tweaking FEC disclaimer requirements for online paid ads.  Republican Commissioner Lee Goodman, an Internet freedom advocate, said (at minute 13:30) he was suspicious of Weintraub’s objectives, because demanding disclaimers on foreign ads would be illogical.  Foreign paid ads already are prohibited by law.  Adding a disclaimer requirement for ads that already are illegal would not be effective.  Furthermore, he questioned whether the United States could effectively police disclaimers on ads posted by foreigners, on foreign computers, through foreign servers, on foreign soil—it is, after all, the World Wide Web. 

Given these obvious limitations, Weintraub’s true aim, just like Ravel’s, must be greater burdens on all political communications by American citizens online.  YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and webcasts streamed over the websites of American citizens will be fully regulated—starting small with disclaimers and soon moving to expenditure reports and even censorship of links, re-tweets and free online interviews under broad theories of “coordination” and prohibited corporate in-kind contributions.

Mr. Warrington concluded by pointing out that if the result of any foreign advertisements is a restriction of free speech, the Russians would be pleased.  If we truly want to prevent foreign powers and actors from improper influence in our elections, we need to zealously protect free speech.

Liberals' Russia Narrative Crumbles as They Rush to Regulate Online Speech

The narrative of Russian interference with the 2016 election that has been one of liberals' favorite tools to attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Trump Presidency continues to crumble.  

Last week, we noted how the Department of Homeland Security had finally notified 21 states where they had evidence of Russian activity regarding their election systems.  Except now California and Wisconsin have been told that this was not actually true, and the election hacking narrative, which started with the Obama DHS, may collapse even further.

Now, Facebook has delivered ads purchased by Russians to Congress and issued some FAQs about them, including these revealing facts (emphasis added):

• An estimated 10 million people in the US saw the ads. We were able to approximate the number of unique people (“reach”) who saw at least one of these ads, with our best modeling [RNLA note: The number of registered voters during the 2016 election was over 157 million and the total citizens of voting age was over 224 million.] 

• 44% of total ad impressions (number of times ads were displayed) were before the US election on November 8, 2016; 56% were after the election. 

• Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result. 

• For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.

But, before their narrative completely crumbles, liberals are rushing to use it as an excuse to regulate online speech, which has long been a goal of campaign finance "reformers" such as former FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel, who advocated overturning the FEC's longstanding exemption of internet activity from certain regulations to apply the regulations to conservative YouTube videos ex post.  Liberal outlet Quartz recently demonstrated how the "reform" community is using the Russian Facebook ads as a pretext to argue for government control of speech by American citizens on the internet (while non-ironically lamenting that Facebook had failed to reach out to any "experts" in the "reform" community as it amended its ad policies).  And Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner are expected to introduce legislation to regulate political advertising online soon (more on that here once it is introduced).

FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman's TechFreedom podcast on these issues, that we highlighted on Monday, summarizes the serious constitutional dangers with the liberals' rush to regulate and what factors should be considered in a more measured approach that respects Americans' important political speech rights on the internet.

Improvement But Concerns Remain About DHS's Role in Our Election Process

There is a push in some quarters to have a larger role for the Department of Homeland Security in our elections.  Last Friday, once again, news came out that should cause all to pause in consideration of such an idea. 

The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this year that it had evidence of Russian activity in 21 states, but it failed to inform individual states whether they were among those targeted. Instead, DHS authorities say they told those who had "ownership" of the systems — which in some cases were private vendors or local election offices.

To be clear, the Trump Administration Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been better than the Obama Administration DHS.  At least they are telling people what is happening. 

"Most importantly, DHS acknowledged that they had contacted the wrong people at the state level and will rectify that going forward by communicating with each state's chief election officials," says [National Association of Secretaries of States] spokesman Stephen Reed. "Finally finding out this information from DHS allows the chief elections officials to move forward on this matter."

However, this whole process calls into question and continues to raise concerns about what a future DHS may do.  It bears remembering that the Obama DHS when considering how to counter a Russian hacking threat drew up plans that included sending armed law enforcement agents to polling places.  As Time magazine reported earlier this year:

President Obama’s White House quietly produced a plan in October to counter a possible Election Day cyber attack that included extraordinary measures like sending armed federal law enforcement agents to polling places, mobilizing components of the military and launching counter-propaganda efforts.

While all can agree that DHS is doing better, serious concerns remain about a larger role in elections for DHS going forward, such as with the designation of election systems as critical infrastructure.  

More Partisan Politics As Usual By Democrats Within the Senate Judiciary Committee

Today, Chairman Chuck Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee accused Democrats within the committee of using tactics to shut down hearings on attempts by foreign agents to influence American laws and elections. Today, Senator Grassley issued a statement: 

Over the last few weeks, my Democrat colleagues have delayed and blocked Judiciary Committee hearings, shuttered a national security briefing and now cut off a hearing about interference in our political system by agents working for foreign powers. 

I don’t know if the minority is intentionally trying to block testimony that may be critical of a firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, but I’ll bet two bits that had Paul Manafort or Donald Trump, Jr. appeared at today’s hearing, it would not have been prematurely shut down. The Democrat leadership is playing politics, plain and simple. But our national security and our democratic systems are no game. So we will reconvene tomorrow to get more of the information we need.

Over the past several weeks, Democrats have been using tactics via a rarely-used procedural tool to curb committee work for hearings. This included blocking a hearing on June 20, which would have advanced the committee's investigation into Russian interference in last year's elections -- something that the Democrats have been clamoring about for months. 



Even this week, the Judiciary Committee withdrew the subpoena it issued to Paul Manafort regarding enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and attempts to influence U.S. elections. This was done after Manafort began the process of handing over documents to the committee and "committed to negotiating in good faith a date for a future interview."



It's a shame that despite the Democrat's attacks about the Russian interference in last year's election, that they block committee hearings on this very topic, despite Republican's willingness to continue this investigation.

FEC Commissioner Weintraub Abuses Power to Attack Trump

RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen wrote today about Democrat FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub's latest in a series of partisan attacks on President Trump:

Weintraub’s campaign against the President, using FEC time and resources, has been going on for months.  Weintraub wrote a letter back in May, after Trump suggested there was vote fraud in the 2016 election and that Kelly Ayotte’s losing bid in New Hampshire may have been due to election meddling, demanding Trump explain himself and offer proof for his claims. . . . 

Most recently, Weintraub has begun actively lobbying her colleagues on the FEC to consider involving themselves in a probe of “the reported attempts of Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”  Weintraub declared in a bid to her fellow commissioners: “Every part of our government that has jurisdiction over these issues must exercise every scrap of its jurisdiction as fully as it can. . . . The FEC must find out the facts of what happened during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and move swiftly and firmly to fix any problems we find.” 

Weintraub then requests that the FEC receive briefings on other agencies’ investigations, examine its enforcement practices, assure the public that FEC databases are secure, begin rule-making regarding corporate spending in politics, consider other rulemaking, and consider making recommendation to Congress. . . . The rest of the memo makes clear that Weintraub views this as only another front to attack the Trump Administration, in hopes of finding some smoking Russian gun to bring down President Trump.  If the FEC acted as Weintraub demands, it could vastly, unilaterally expand its jurisdiction and infringe on the jurisdiction of other federal agencies, Congress, and the states. . . . 

There is no doubt Weintraub in her vocal anti-Trump fanaticism is overstepping her mandate as an FEC commissioner. . . . Now, Weintraub threatens to make it nearly impossible for the FEC to remain impartial on any matter regarding President Trump. . . . As Republican FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman has said: “We are a law enforcement agency at the end of the day, and we must be strictly impartial and neutral in how we approach cases, not just in actuality but in the appearance of how we conduct ourselves.”

The RNLA will follow Commissioner Weintraub's actions and highlight future examples of partisanship here and in our weekly Daily Caller column.

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.”

The Russian Distraction

Both houses of Congress held hearings today on Russian interference in the 2016 election.  What did we learn?  Not much.  Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  A variety of officials testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  

Indiana Secretary of State, incoming President of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), and member of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Connie Lawson, testified to separate fact from fiction in the Russia hysteria (and warn about the problems with the Department of Homeland Security's designation of election systems as critical infrastructure) (emphasis in original):

As Senator Warner noted in a letter sent yesterday (June 20, 2017) to Homeland Security Secretary Kelly, we have not seen any credible evidence that vote casting or counting was subject to manipulation in any state or locality in the 2016 election cycle, or any reason to question the results. While still alarming, there is a big difference between manipulating VOTERS and manipulating VOTES.  

Here is what chief state election officials know about documented foreign targeting of state and local election systems in the 2016 election cycle, as confirmed by DHS: No major cybersecurity issues were reported on Election Day: November 8, 2016. . . . We also learned that foreign-based hackers were able to gain access to voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois last summer, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to warn state election offices to increase their election security measures for the November 2016 election. To our knowledge, no data was deleted or modified as part of the breaches, and these are not systems involved in vote tallying. . . . Of course, in more recent days, we have learned from a top-secret NSA report that the identity of a company providing voter registration support services in several states was compromised, and some 122 local election offices received spear phishing emails as a result. . . .  

While there is clearly a pattern of foreign targeting of election systems in the last cycle, it is also very important to underscore that voting machines are not connected to the Internet or networked in any way. I say this not only for the benefit of this Committee, but for the media as well. We must understand how to label, describe and discuss election infrastructure responsibly and accurately when informing the public about elections, because there has been a great deal of misinformation publicized, including statements from the federal government. . . It is gravely concerning that election officials have only recently learned about the threat referenced in the leaked NSA report, especially – and I emphasize this – given the fact that DHS repeatedly told state election officials no credible threat existed in the fall of 2016. 

The media's and Democrat's continued focus on Russian interference in the 2016 election is distracting the nation from addressing some of the important issues facing it, as even Democrats are starting to realize.  Indeed, it is even distracting election officials from important work to address real cybersecurity concerns, such as the actual penetration of voter registration systems by both Russia and the DHS.  With every new revelation and in every new hearing, the same facts are established: no vote was changed through hacking by Russia or any other person or entity; there is no evidence of Trump campaign or administration collusion with Russia; Russia and DHS did hack or attempt to hack voter registration systems, but no voter records were changed; and Russia has long attempted to influence U.S. elections, just as the U.S. attempts to influence elections in other countries.  

Chillingly, the unswerving focus on Russia means that Russia has won, according to some observers:

Some Russia-watchers believe that the goal of the 2016 Russian campaign shenanigans was not to elect Trump but to damage Clinton before her election. That would make a certain kind of sense: Putin does not want a President Trump or a President Clinton — he wants an American president so hamstrung by political rancor, personal weakness, and petty venality that American leadership around the world is compromised. 

Mission accomplished. 

“Russia” is now shorthand for what will be an open-ended investigation of Trump and everybody around him, one that probably will last throughout his term. That may not have been part of Putin’s plan, but it unquestionably serves Putin’s interests. That is something worth keeping in mind.

We hope that Democrats and the media can put aside this hysteria over Russia to focus on real policy issues and the actual threats to election security that come from places like Russia.

The New Red Scare: No Evidence of Actual Russian Tampering with Votes and Tallies

“There remains NO evidence that voting machines were hacked or that anyone tampered with the result of the election,” David Becker prominently declared in his article in Center for Election Innovation and Research.

While we know the Russians attempted to interfere with the 2016 Election, there is no proof they were able to tamper with any voting machines, the result of any election, or even voter registration records. Mr. Becker’s piece serves as a summary of what we know and do not know about this Russian scheme. The article serves as a rebut to the recently leaked NSA report, which resulted in the arrest of a government contractor. Mr. Becker noted several important points that informed persons ought to know:

Information in voter registration systems was accessed. As we’ve known since even before the election, hackers successfully accessed some voter registration data. In at least two states [Illinois and Arizona] . . . it appears the breach was caught before information was compromised. And we’ve known about the hack of VR Systems since at least October. . . .

Voter registration systems are not the systems on which ballots are cast/counted. A successful hack on a voter registration database, or on a vendor that solely works with voter registration systems and electronic pollbooks, like VR Systems, cannot, by itself, put the vote count at risk. Voter registration data is routinely backed up and stored safely, in case of any system breakdown or hack. Even if voter registration data is compromised, at exactly the right moment to create the greatest mischief, it would be detected, as it would result in longer lines and increased provisional ballot . . . .

However, certainly questions remain [emphasis added]:

• Which local election offices were targeted by the phishing attacks outlined in the NSA analysis? This is important to assess the risk.

• Whether voter registration systems were compromised in a way that could have affected the voting process in November? [I]f a hack had been successful, it is virtually certain that we would have seen evidence of this, but more analysis could be helpful.

• Whether any of these attacks was successful, and if so, whether vote tallying systems were compromised? To date, there is still no evidence of this.

Mr. Becker concluded with this important point:

First, we should resist the instinct to jump to conclusions. We still have no evidence to suggest the results of the election were compromised, which continues to be exceedingly unlikely . . . There is still overwhelming evidence that Trump won the majority of the vote in those states that comprised a majority of electoral votes. Hysteria and misinformation does not help us get to the bottom of things . . .  

The reality is the media and popular press are purposely sensationalizing this story. This hysteria is designed to threaten the legitimacy of an Election, its results, and Donald Trump's Presidency just as he is starting to govern. While the Russians' attempts must be investigated, ALL the facts need to be fairly presented and accurately portrayed.