Former Homeland Security Secretary j Johnson testified before the House Intelligence Committee this morning that it's a fact, plain and simple that the Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyber attacks on the US in for
the purpose of influencing the presidential election. Johnson said last fall there was a growing list of states where Homeland saw scanning and probing around voter registration databases, and at least one or two instances the effort was successful at an intrusion. So there was a growing list, and we saw the scope of this activity expanding as time progressed, and then eventually in January, we were in a position to say that this this activity itself was also the
Russian government. Johnson says, Russian cyber attacks are going to get worse before they get better, and at this time those on the offense the Russians have the upper hand. Joining me are Bradley Moss Apartment Mark Said, and William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and counter Terrorism
at Syracuse Law School. Bratt Johnson described in detail how they saw the growing Russian probing around voter registration databases, so they had the knowledge yet they didn't seem to have the ability to do anything about it, and do they yet well, And this is part of the way we've set up our electoral system is that it's set up set in a decentralized manner and controlled by the states.
We don't have a quote unquote national election. We actually have fifty individual state elections, and each state has its own rules for handling them based on the county and the local level. So what the former secretary was describing was they were attempting, and there was some pushback from
the individual states. They were attempting to coordinate with the states to raise these concerns and to find a mechanism by which DHS could provide assistance and to ensure the stability and the safety of the total process without infringing upon the state's sovereign rights to run their election process in cordance with state laws. And I think that's part of the problem we're gonna always have going forward. You know,
you heard it in the secretary's testimony. There was a lot of pushback, a lot of concern about federal overreach into the electoral process. And I don't know if there is a necessarily silver bullet to fix it. Certainly, the designation as critical infrastructure by the former secretary and the reaffirmation of that by the current Secretary of DHS, I believe was a good move. But we're always going to have some level of vulnerability given the way the decentralized
manner in which we conduct elections. Bill. At the Senate Intelligence Committee, where they had hearings on the same issue, the Under Secretary for Cybersecurity at DHS said there's evidence that one state election systems were targeted. Johnson said that what he knows from open source is that thirty nine states were hacked. Do you know the number? And why is the Department of Homeland Security still not willing to
disclose which state election systems were hacked? Well, the number I've read in the media is thirty nine as well. I probably read the same reports that Johnson did, and I think it's uh as Brad said, these are these are fifty separate systems, and so it's it's up to the states to decide whether to reveal the extent to which their systems have been threatened or intruded upon. I think one of the key points here is sort of ironic, even though Uh, the offense has got the upper hand.
As you said in your lead, in the fact that we have such a federalized system here was such a wide stratification of election layers and officials down to the county level, actually makes our system more resilient. It's harder to damage the thousands of jurisdictions where our elections are conducted in hell. Brad Johnson said that he was not happy that the d n C would not allow them to help, even though the d n C had been
in contact with the FBI. Is there any reason why the d n C would allow them to help when how much help could they give? Well, yeah, I mean
this and this. It was kind of a back and forth in terms of web not a d n C should have turned over the server or if providing the analysis by I believe it was called crowd strike or cloud strike, whatever the name of the third party vendor was who did the analysis, was sufficient the one under the one issue and how I understand my view of why d n the DNC was probably hesitant was the same reason corporations are hesitant in general. Whenever I have
to provide data, it's proprietary data. So yes, there is a, you know, an abstract concept of well, why wouldn't they just hand over the server to the FBI and d h S so that they could fully investigate and conduct forensic analysis. On the other hand, if you d n C, you've got your own interests, your own proprietary interest in protecting that data, and you're to have reservations about handing
it handing it over to a government entity. And I think that's kind of what played out here to the detriment of the d n C. I've been talking with Bradley Moss, partner at Mark Said, and William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and counter Terrorism at Syracuse Law School, about former Homeland Secretary Security Secretary J.
Johnson's testimony this morning before the House Intelligence Committee. His testimony about the cyber vulnerabilities in Our Election Infrastructure Itself Bill. Last week, there was a data breach, a Republican National Committee data breach that led to the exposure of a hundred and nine million voter files including names, mailing addresses,
phone numbers, dates of birth, etcetera. That's just about the entire registered voter list in the US, and the third party vendor involved in the breach said, it was accept full responsibility. If we have breaches like this, what hope is there for there to be any any security? A certain way of bad one. And you know, it reminds us that the first layer of defense here are the
electoral systems themselves. They need better security. And the security can't come from the federal government or be imposed by the federal government. It has to be developed on a state by state basis, and sometimes even at lower levels of government security systems are there. In the case last week, it was simply simple sloppiness that allowed the breach to occur.
The public officials and their and their hardware and software need to be a top notch, but also the people who are managing the systems need to be well trained and need to be very vigilant. Let's turn our focus now to another part of the Russia investigation, and that's Michael Flynn. It's hard to believe, Brad that Lynn was only the National Security Advisor for twenty five days, because he seems to be near the center of every investigation
of Russian interference. Um he publicized his request for immunity, his attorney wrote that General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told MSNBC that he suspects Flynn is already cooperating with the FBI. Is if that is happening, is there a problem with giving him I suspect they gave him some kind of immunity, doesn't
isn't that problematic for the other investigations. Well, the immunity that would be granted would be coming from the FBI in the sense that they would be most likely striking a plea deal for lack of about our term in terms of Dave agreed between the parties, between the FBI and Mr Flynn's attorney that Mr Flynn ultimately publicly plea guilty to some lower level offenses, most likely issues in terms of his answers to the FBI investigators and on
his security clearance paper work where he appeared to have provided false service leading information, and in response, they will make sex sentence sensing recommendations and they'll allow him to provide extensive additional details on whatever he knows whatever he was involved in while with the campaign that may be relevant to the Russia investigation without him having to worry
about incriminating himself and facing additional criminal liability. This is a common tactic by law enforcement to basically go for the smaller fish, pick up what information you can strike, and plea deal with them, so they plead to some lower offense and use it if you see something as a larger, more tantalizing, uh target going down the line. And that's always what we've been wondering here, is whether just certain rogue officials within the campaign doing stupid things,
or is there something more to this? And I think we're gonna have to wait a while, probably months, if not the year or two, and so we truly have the answer to that question. Bill, explain the difference between what the FBI is investigating and what Mueller is investigating. Well, the FBI is continuing a counter intelligence investigations, still trying to learn what happened, uh with regard to the Russians
and Mueller courses. Also, as Brad's comments just suggested, he's in investigating the implication that the Trump campaign or Trump officials administration officials were somehow colluding in this enterprise. So I have to remember that they both executive branch investigations.
We're not talking about the congressional investigations here, So both are prosecutorial in that sense that they have a fairly different focus, and there's there are also um officials apparently at the FBI, BRAD, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Department of Justice greed in January, and we heard some of the testimony that Flynn posed a problem, Yet the CIA continue to share
sensitive intelligence with him. A Trump administration official told The New York Times that the CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, did not share the agency's concerns with the president. Do you see a problem with security on different levels with this administration. I'm hesitant to say it's you mean, how has it to say that it's something extraordinary out of the usual in terms of how they're handling it, only because we're so new with this one and we don't quite know
if they're just getting their sea legs. I will say that the fact that someone who several agencies viewed is compromised and suffect the blackmail, was allowed to maintain his access to classified information and continue sitting in on meetings discussing our most sensitive national security secrets set off a lot of red flags about whether the officials, particularly the senior officials in this eight House are doing their proper
due diligence in safeguarding classified information. You know, I could certainly stay. If it's one of my clients who was being viewed as subject to blackmail to the extent that Mr Flynn was, their access would have been immediately suspended pending further investigation. There have been counterintelligence polygraphs and all the manner of things before they were ever allowed back into a room with classified information. The President, of course,
can override any of that. But I don't get the sense the President knew about it, and I don't even know yet. And this is what the New York Times story didn't truly flesh out. I don't know if Pompeo didn't tell him because he decided it wasn't something the President didn't need to know, or because Pompeo himself didn't know. We don't know how compartmentalized this information was. We will have to be. We'll have to leave it at that
for today. Thank you, Brad Moss, Partner, Mark Sade, and William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and counter Terrorism at Syriges Law School,