Current, former US officials detail Russian cyberattacks

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, ranking member of the committee, was skeptical of this approach.

The Justice Department has appointed a special counsel.

Mueller met for about an hour with the top four Republicans and Democrats on the committee.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson defended the Obama administration's decision to delay publicly commenting on Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election on Wednesday.

But while the malevolent Muscovites were being excoriated on Capitol Hill-and while the Putin government was abruptly cancelling a scheduled meeting of a "senior-level working group" of Russian and USA officials that was established a few weeks ago-two members of the Trump cabinet were engaging in "direct and candid" and "philosophical-level discussions" at the State Department with the equally-hacktivist Communist Chinese.

Not only did today's hearing make clear that election systems remain vulnerable to cyberattack; it also laid bare significant uncertainty in how the government is going about addressing those vulnerabilities.

Jeannette Manfra, a cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, said the decentralized nature of US elections means that an attempt to penetrate state systems and change results would be "virtually impossible" to accomplish without being detected.

When Tapper challenged Speier on her assertion about DHS, she responded: "They reached out to inform them, but in terms of the gravity of the issue, it was really never one that was elevated". It's possible for a hacker to infect one of these machines remotely - perhaps by tricking some election official to click on a link containing malicious software - and this could conceivably infect the memory cards to change election results.

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. Secretaries of state, who oversee the election process in 40 states, complained in their testimony that DHS has failed to share vital information with them about their own cyber vulnerabilities.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, noted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed intrusions into voter registration databases in Arizona and IL, and said Americans need to know the identities of the other 19 states where meddling was detected.

"The answer", Johnson said, "was not reassuring: the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the DNC had been in contact with each other months before about the intrusion, and the DNC did not feel it needed DHS's assistance at that time". He suggested former FBI Director James Comey wouldn't have taken an inquiry into the Trump campaign lightly.

The email leaks over the summer made Johnson revisit his idea from January.

"I was anxious to know whether our folks were in there", Johnson said.

"The former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson repeatedly told my colleagues and I no specific or credible threats existed in the fall of 2016", Lawson said at the hearing.

Johnson said he was disappointed the DNC would not accept Homeland Security's help in finding its cyber-vulnerabilities.

That's from the prepared testimony of Jeh Johnson, who served for President Barack Obama.

Johnson is testifying before the House intelligence committee.

As Marco Rubio (R-FL) put it, "Even the news that a hacker from a foreign government could have gotten into a computer system" could "create the specter of a losing candidate arguing the election was rigged". That was Donald Trump, although Johnson didn't name him.

Undersecretary for cybersecurity at DHS, Jeanette Manfra, says there is evidence that 21 state election systems were targeted, but she told the Senate intelligence committee she couldn't disclose the identities of the states because that was up to the states.

Arizona and IL previous year confirmed that hackers had targeted their voter registration systems. According to Hale, 21 states reported that their systems - mostly involved with voter registration databases - had been scanned, but there were no signs of any other successful intrusions.

Because of Trump's statement, he said, he and his colleagues were "concerned" that making a statement "would be in and of itself challenging the integrity of the election process".

"It was a nonpartisan interest", Johnson told the intelligence panel Wednesday.

In August, he said he "floated the idea" of designating the country's election infrastructure as critical - which would allow election officials to get cybersecurity help. Manfra said that all "system owners" in those states had been contacted about the incidents, but that may not invlude state election officials. They considered running elections "a sovereign and exclusive responsibility of the states" and viewed his proposal as a federal takeover.

Both sides of the Capitol on Wednesday heard from experts about the extent of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, with officials for the first time revealing how many states' election-related systems were targeted by Russian hackers.