He pointed to four statements he issued in September and October 2016, particularly the Oct. 7 joint statement from DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in which both agencies said they were " confident" the Russian government was behind hacks of U.S. political organizations like the DNC.
Noting that the hacking happened "at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself", Mr. Johnson said he was moved to try to shield the nation's election system by the "unprecedented" nature of Russian interference in the last election.
Johnson told lawmakers that the Department of Homeland Security didn't perform an analysis after the election about whether the vote had been manipulated.
"We have evidence of ... election-related systems in 21 states were targeted", she said. As a result, some 122 local election offices received phishing emails.
Liles did not specify which 21 states he was referring to.
"The scale and the aggressiveness" of the Russian interference in 2016 set it apart from previous "active measure" campaigns used by Moscow in the Cold War era, said Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI's counterintelligence division.
In the weeks after, intelligence officials became convinced the Russians were behind those efforts, though he said it was not until January that they were "in a position to say" that.
Representative Trey Gowdy of SC, a Republican who is helping to lead the committee's investigation into Russian interference, asked Mr. Johnson why a victim - in this case, the D.N.C. - would not turn over evidence of a crime. "The DNC has been in regular contact with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for many months, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the DNC has provided all the information it needed to make its assessment".
"Why did it take the administration so long to make a public statement that a foreign adversary was trying to influence the American election?" "Why was that course rejected?" asked Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.
Her statements were the first public confirmation of the scale of foreign interference in the U.S. presidential election.
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"Many would perhaps criticize us for taking sides", he said, pointing out President Trump had claimed the election would be "rigged".
Rubio told a story about seeing a fake story that said President Obama had "banned" the Pledge of Allegiance - and getting text messages asking him about it. "So we were concerned that by making a statement that we might in and of itself be challenging the integrity of the election process".
In the second panel, state election officials also indicated that they were working to secure voting systems, with and without federal help.
Connie Lawson, Indiana's Secretary of State, said there was "no evidence that vote casting or counting was subject to manipulation in any state or locality" in an opening statement during her testimony Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Sandvoss is expected to walk the committee through a cyberattack last July that allowed hackers to breach a database of as many as 200,000 voter records.
"One of the most remarkable things that Jeh Johnson said today was that the cost of Russia's attack is that we are talking about its interference in the campaign today rather than focusing on, he said, health care", Swalwell said. "That is a fact, plain and simple", he testified Wednesday.
In early August 2016, he says he even "floated the idea" of designating American election infrastructure as critical. And state officials must apply tougher cybersecurity safeguards to voting equipment and elections management. Manfra said that all "system owners" in those states had been contacted about the incidents, but that may not invlude state election officials.
Johnson says he moved to designate US elections as critical infrastructure on the same day as the release of a declassified USA intelligence report that said Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered" an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the USA presidential election.
"That is correct", the DHS acting deputy undersecretary responded.
That's from the prepared testimony of Jeh Johnson, who served for President Barack Obama. Joe Manchin asked Priestap what the United States could do to fight back, and Priestap noted that the Obama administration slapped sanctions on Russian Federation for the election hacking.
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