Transcripts For CSPAN3 House Judiciary Committee Hearing On Election Security 20240713

Next, officials from the fai Justice Department, Homeland Security, and u. S. Election Assistance Commission testify on election infrastructure security. And how each agency is working to protect voting systems and coordinat coordinate with state and local officials. This house judiciary hearing runs about 2 1 2 hours. On judiy welcomthe judiciarywill come to. Without objection, the chair is authorized to house subcommittee on the judiciary will come to order, without objection. The chair is authorized to declare recesses of the committee at any time. We welcome everyone to this mornings hearing on securing americas elections part two, oversight of Government Agencies. I will now recognize myself for an Opening Statement. Last month this Committee Held part one of a series of hearings on securing americas elections. In that hearing, three witnesses who had been jointly selected by the committee testified unequivocally that our nations elections are under attack. Deborah plunket, former director on the National Security council under both president clinton and george w. Bush warned we must take bold decisive and expeditious steps to address Cyber Threats. We must treat Election Security as imperative for safeguarding our democracy. Secretary of state Kathy Bookvar from the commonwealth of pennsylvania elaborated. Election security is a race without a finish line, and our adversaries are not slowing down. This testimony has been confirmed by the leaders of our Intelligence Community. Last month, the director of National Intelligence testified that foreign actors will view the 2020 u. S. Elections as an opportunity to advance their interests. We expect them to refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each others experiences and efforts in previous elections. In short, there is no question that our elections, the corner stone of our free and Democratic Society are exposed. Protecting our nations democratic processes from foreign attack must be among our Top Priorities and we are committed to doing the work. Today we have representatives from the four federal agencies leading the charge on Election Security. The department of Homeland Security, the federal bureau of investigation, the department of justice and the election assistance committee. Commission, im sorry. At their core, elections are run at the state and local level but our federal government must provide critical support to help states to defend themselves from hostile foreign actors. Protecting our elections requires a whole of Society Approach that relies on coordinated actions by Government Agencies at all levels, nincluding the agencys represented here today. Federal agencies responsible for protecting our elections have made significant progress since 2016. These efforts are important and commendable but significant vulnerabilities in our system remain. To start, our efforts must be integrated and coordinated, a simple Google Search of report Election Security issues turns up results for over 20 different groups across agencies and others, these agencies and others. There must be clear lines of authority to ensure that states know which of the multiple programs across these agencies is in charge. Equally important, we must do more to ensure better federal and state collaboration. That requires earning the trust of states. At a public speech on october 3rd, 2018, dhs director krebs explained that in 2016 when the federal government called state officials to alert them of threats there was, as he said, no trust and there was no certainty or confidence in the about of the federal government. One way to strengthen trust is through enhanced transparency. In 2016, the specific intent of the russians was not initially made public. Today we can do better. We can educate state and local officials and the public about influence operations by bringing our adversaries tactics to light, we can prevent them from succeeding. In addition, we must ensure that the development and maintenance of our systems matches the evolving nature of Cyber Threats. For example, current eac federal guidelines for our certification processes were created in 2005 and are woefully out of date. As our witness, mr. Bird of microsoft testified last month, this process is more than a decade old and its too slow and burdensome to enable voting officials to respond as quickly as needed to our agile adversaries. Finally, we must ensure that state and local officials, the front line defenders of democracy have the resources and support they need to protect our systems. Dhs has made it clear that it requires Additional Resources to fulfill this task. Its requested, for example, 20 additional advisers to help states in anticipation of the 2020 election cycle. On may 15th, 2019, the eac like wise testified before the senate that the u. S. Currently lacks sufficient funding in critical areas to protect our 2020 elections. Unfortunately, however, President Trump and his administration, rather than listening to the warnings of federal agencies act the seriousness of the threat picture and requests for more resources to secure our elections has done the opposite. The Trump Administration has cut senior cyber positions, downsized by half dhss Election Security teams, and proposed significant budget cuts to dhss major Election Security program. All of these actions leave us more vulnerable to the ongoing threat to our democracy. We will not let this happen. Elections cannot be a partisan issue. They must be an american issue. This committee is committed to working together to protect our democracy from all threats to our elections in all forms, whether to our physical election infrastructure or the ongoing disinformation canmpaigns comin from russia. I thank each of our witnesses here today. Our colleagues look forward to hearing your testimony about your ongoing efforts to secure our elections and what important work remains to be done. Without objection, the Ranking Members statement will be placed in the record and all other Opening Statements will be included in the record. I will now introduce todays witnesses. Matt masterson is the senior Cyber Security adviser at the department of Homeland Security where he manages Election Security under the National Protection and programs director. From 2014 to 2018 he served as a u. S. Elections commissioner, and served as interim chief of staff for the ohio secretary of state, deputy chief Information Officer and Deputy Director of elections. Mr. Masterson received his bs and ba from Miami University in oxford, ohio, and his jd from the university of Dayton School of law. Nicky flores is the Deputy Assistant director of the Counter Intelligence division of the fbi where she oversees the Intelligence Branch, which includes the Foreign Influence Task force system. Ms. Flores entered the bureau in 2005 as an intelligence analyst, and served in many other positions including Deputy Assistant director of Operations Branch three in the Counter Terrorism division where she oversaw Terrorism Financing operations, strategic operations and Counter Terrorism analysis. Ms. Flores has a bachelors degree in psychology from the university of rhode island, and a masters degree in criminology from George Washington university. Adam hicky is a Deputy Assistant attorney general of the National Security division at the department of justice. In that role, he manages the divisions efforts to combat National Security threats, including threats to our election systems. Before joining the department of justice, mr. Hicky clerked for judge jed retchoff for the Southern District of new york, and judge robert catsman of the u. S. Court of appeals for the second circuit, received his bachelors degree from Harvard College and jd from yale college. The designated federal officer for the Technical Guidelines Development Committee which develops the voluntary voting systems guidelines. Before being appointed vice chair, commissioner hovland served as the acting chief council for the u. S. Senate committee on rules and administration. He received his ba from the university of Central Arkansas and his jd from the university of oregon. Please note that each of your written statements will be entered into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, i ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes to help you stay within that time. Theres a timing light on your table. When the light switches from green to yellow, you have one minute to conclude your testimony. When the light turns red it signals your five minutes have expir expired. We want to thank you all for participating in todays hearing. If you please rise, ill begin by swearing you in. Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony youre about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief so help you god. You may be seated. Okay. Let the record show that the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. All right. Mr. Masterson, you may begin and youll have to push the button to turn your microphone on before you start. Thank you. Well, thank you, and good morning members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to testify regarding the Cyber Security and fracture security agencys efforts to help secure our election infrastructure across this country. My name is matt masterson, im the election lead for sisa and the former chair of u. S. Election Assistance Commission as well as an elected official in the state of ohio. Sisa has a strong relationship with our federal partners seated here at the table with state and local Election Officials across the country. Our election related mission is clear, to support Election Officials in their prooifivate sector partners. Elections are run at the state and local level by dedicated professionals across americas 800 election jurisdictions and we work to ensure officials dont have to defend themselves from sophisticated threats on their own. We have worked tirelessly to strengthen our partnership with the Election Community. We already provide free and voluntary resources and services to all 50 states over 2,100 local and territorial election jurisdictions, six election associations, 12 Election Technology providers and political organizations including president ial campaigns. Our approach has been and continues to be threefold, one, making sure the Election Community has the information they need to defend their systems, two, making sure they have the Technical Support and tools to identify and mitigate risks to their election infrastructure, and three, building enduring partnerships to advance security efforts together. Sisa is laser focused on building scaleable repeatable mechanisms to dramatically grow our information sharing capabilities. We share actionable information through our close partnerships with the Intelligence Community Law Enforcement and the private sector. More importantly, state and local Election Officials are sharing what they see on their networks with us. We deployed intrusion Protection Capabilities or albert sensors to provide realtime Detection Capabilities of malicious activity on election infrastructure on all 50 states. We provide Technical Support and services to Election Officials and vendors. As we refine our understanding of Election Officials needs, we are shifting to capabilities that are quicker, less intrusive and can scale, we deployed a remote penetration capability, thanks in part to the funding provided by congress. This remote testing capability allow us to identify risks and vulnerab vulnerables without having to deploy teams in local election offices and without time and people. Sisa has been working closely with election providers to ensure election systems and technologies undergo testing to discover and fix vulnerabilities in their software. This scaleability is critical because while our initial efforts in 2016 were primarily targeted as state Election Officials we recognize the need to increase our support to counties and misunicipalities. No cost information sharing dto identify cyber risks to infrastructure and checklist of action items to mitigate the risks. The final area of focus has been building on enduring partnerships towards our collective defense. It may seem mundane by governance, maintaining and planning is the critical elements. For the 2020 election cycle, sisa has built off the elections learned in the 2018 election, and is expanding our work to prioritize the following lines of efforts, one, expanding engagement to local Election Officials. We continue to work with Election Officials to improve their and our understanding of risk to their systems. In june we did the table top the vote exercise where 47 states, thousands of local Election Officials, the private sector and federal government worked together through scenarios to share information and understand how we would all collectively respond to threats to our election infrastructure. With a better understanding of risk, we can identify and provide the resources they need to secure their election systems. Sisa has expanded our level of engagement and sharing best Cyber Security practices with political organizations as well, including the dnc and rnc. And has engaged directly with campaigns to offer our services. In coordination with interact si partners is committed to helping americans recognize and avoid foreign disinformation operations impacting our elections through innovative efforts like our war on pineapple campaign. We educated americans on the tactics of Foreign Influence Campaign using a topic everyone can relate to, the divisive issue of pineapple on pizza. Well continue to put out educational material to build resilience in the American Public on foreign influence operations. Finally were working closely with our Intelligence Community in the private sector to increase the quantity, quality and timeliness of intelligence production at the unclassified levels to help Election Officials and the public identify and expose foreign influence operations. Cultivate a safer, more secure and resilient homeland. Thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee and i look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Flores. Thank you, and good morning, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the fbis efforts to secure americas elections. As youve just heard, im nicky flores, Deputy Assistant director for the fbis Counter Intelligence division. The fbi is the federal lead for identifying and combatting maligned foreign influence operations which target u. S. Democratic operations with Democratic Institutions and values and this includes the investigation of electionrelated cyber intrusions and crimes. In order to achieve the strategic geopolitical objective foreign adversaries shift u. S. Policy, distort u. S. Political sentiment and discourse, undermine confidence in institutions and values or interfere with u. S. Electoral processes. Most widely reported these days have been the attempts by foreign adversaries to discredit u. S. Individuals and institutions through the use of false person as on social media platforms. These operations have aimed to spread disinformation, sow civil discord on institutions and values. They involve a wide spectrum of activity, however, its the coercive aspect of these activity that form the basis. It is why we talk about maligned foreign influence. This is by no means a new problem. Online anonymity have changed the character of the influence threat and how the fbi and its partners must address it. At my role at the fbi, or what we call the fibif. Director wray established the operations targeting the United States. It is led by the Counterintelligence Division by agents and professional staff from the Counter Terrorism, cyber and criminal investigative divisions. Following the 2018 midterm elections the fbi expanded the scope of the fidif. However, we now have units to confront foreign influence operations not just from rush abu iran and other global strategies. They take a twopronged approach. The first prong focuses on our investigations and operations. It opens investigations with the foreign influence nexus. You might think of it as a hub with the personnel as the spokes. It seeks to impose costs on our adversary, specifically key influencers and enablers. They work collaboratively with the Cyber Division and cyber task forces. This way, they can quickly respond to threats with the infrastructure. Moreover, the Cyber Division works closely with the u. S. Intelligence community to work to determine attribution. The second prong centers on information and intelligence sharing. The fbi worked closely with our fellow Intelligence Community agencies as well as state and local Law Enforcement partners and Election Officials to help detect, disrupt and deter our add versaries. They led to the creation of protective forces and the department of justice, the department of Homeland Security and the United States secret service and the odni. Through protective voices we developed a series of videos to help campaigns better understand this threat and make them available through the fbis public website. In the past months weve expanded protective forces providing webinars and inperson briefings on cyber and malign influence threats. Currently, were expanding the audience to include congressional campaigns and the general public. We collaborate extensively with the u. S. Government partners to provide state and local government, Election Officials and social Media Companies so that they can harden their systems against cyber attackses. Collaboration built a common understanding of the threat landscape. The last prong of our approach is private sector partnerships. Technology partnerships have a frontline responsibility to secure their own networks, products and platform, but were doing our part to provide actionable intelligence to better enable them to address abuse of their platform by foreign actors. The fub has established technologies with the technology and social Media Companies to enable a Rapid Exchange of threat information. Across all of these prongs, the fbi is constantly reviewing its outreach. However, each doubts about whether it has occurred can be damaging, but we do know our adversaries are actively trying to advance outcomes in advance of the 2020 election. While our focus is on Election Security, these adversaries seek to influence Public Opinions in important weighs beyond just elections. We look forward to continuing this important work and appreciate the support of this committee. Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today. Im happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much. Well hickey . Good morning, distinguished members of the committee and thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Justice Department concerning our efforts to ensure the safety and security of our nations election infrastructure and to combat malign foreign influence. By malign foreign influence im relating to covert action for sentiment and public discourse, sow divisions in our society or undermine confidence in our Democratic Institutions and these can range from computer hacking that targets selection infrastructure or Political Parties to statesponsored media campaigns. This issue protecting our nations democratic processes has been and remains a top priority of the department. Our principal role here is the investigation and prosecution of federal crimes, but malign foreign influence efforts extend beyond efforts to interfere with elections and they require more than Law Enforcement responses alone. Recognizing that, we approach this National Security threat as well as any other by using our own legal tools as well as supporting the tools and authorities of others and to the best of our ability we try to prevent crimes from occurring or disrupt them in progress in part by sharing information with people and institutions to allow them to better protect themselves. Reflecting the priority of these issue, last year the attorney general Cyber Digital Task force analyzed the types of foreign influence operations and laid out a framework to guide our responses and since the 2016 election we have taken a number of steps to combat malign foreign influence and report secure elections. First, as an intelligencedriven organization and member of the Intelligence Community, the fbi pursues tips and leads including classify information to identify, investigate and disrupt illegal foreign influence activities and to that end, as d. A. D. Flores explained, the fbi established the for inleadership task force to influence its response for coordination both within the department and among the department our federal partners and the private sector. Second, together with other agencies through a series of outreach and education effort, weve been helping public official, candidates and social Media Companies to harden their own networks and platforms against malign foreign influence operations. Third, we have improved enforcement of the Foreign Agents registration act and one of the statutory tools that helps ensure transparency of foreign entities and individuals. Effective enforcement makes it more difficult for those entities and individuals to hide their role in activities and occurring within the United States. Fourth, our investigations have led to a number of criminal charges and other Enforcement Actions that have exposed, malign influence efforts by foreign states and their proxies. While we work with other nations to obtain custody of foreign defendants whenever possible, just the charges themselves help educate the American Public about the threats that they face. Fifth, our investigations have supported the actions of other u. S. Government agencies such as financial sanctions imposed by the secretary of the treasury. Finally, even outside the context of criminal charges, we have used the information from our investigations both to warn and to reassure potential victims and the general public alike about malign foreign influence activities. Now victim notifications, defensive counterintelligence briefings are Traditional Department activities and they must be conducted with particular sensitivity in the context of foreign influence and elections and in some circumstances exposure can be counterproductive or otherwise imprudent, given countervailing considerations the department has adopted a Public Policy for evaluating whether and how to disclose malign foreign influence activities and among its first principles, partisan deliberations must play no role in our decisions. Our adversaries will undoubtedly change their tactics and we will need to be nimble in our response, but the framework we have developed to respond will have staying power and as you can see, the department plays an Important Role in combatting foreign efforts to interfere in our elections, but there are limits to our role and that of the federal government as a whole. Combatting requires a whole of Society Approach that relies on coordinated actions by Government Agencies at various levels and the active engagement of an informed public. Thank you again and i look forward to your questions. Thank you very much. Mr. Hofland . Good morning, members of the committee. I am before you this morning to detail the work of the u. S. Election Assistance Commission better known as the eac. To fulfill its mission under the help america vote act or hava, i also appreciate opportunity to highlight the great work of state and local Election Officials around the country. As you know, our nations elections are run at the state and local levels with each of the 50 state and u. S. Territories running elections in different ways. Election officials in over 8,000 local jurisdictions are ultimately responsible for conducting our elections and their work truly protects and ensures the most fundamental pillar of our democracy, the vote. Since 2016, theres been enormous increase and focus on the security of our election which is is just one of the many responsibilities Election Officials must address. I am pleased to report from my Vantage Point the Elections Community has responded in an impressive fashion considering the challenges we face. Nearly every conference i attend while traveling around the country has a substantial focus security and protecting the integrity of elections is a constant topic in meetings with election administrator, our federal partners and external stakeholders. We need to ask yourseourselves key question, is that enough when they dont have the sustained resources they need to defend our democracy against potential threats. The good news is following the department of homeland securities departmenta critical of a structure, there has beena i sea change in information sharing between the government and state and local officials. This includes the cree asian at which brings state and local officials with federal partners as well as a sector doocoordinag council and nonprofit entities that support local Election Officials. Weve also seen the creation of the election infrastructure information and sharing and Analysis Center or eiisac which now has over 2100 members including every state chief Election Officials office. The deployment of albert monitors hardening of systems and increased trainings and promotion of tabletop exercises around cyber events have all exponentially increased since 2016. The fy2018 appropriation of 380 million of hava funding which the eoc distributed has largely contributed to its employments and states have had the ability to essentially choose from a menu of reforms, improvements and priorities that could address their most pressing needs and vulnerabilities. As chairwoman mccormick testified earlier this year the eac projects that 85 of the fy2018 money will be spent in advance of 2020. Weve seen some states use the funding to replace aging or paperless equipment, other states have replaced their statewide Voter Registration database or added additional security measures like multifactor authentication. Some have shoefted table top, to give officials a experience for various threats. One of my personal uses is the implementation of cyber navigator programs. Essentially the state recognizes that many local jurisdictions do not have the capacity or need for a fulltime election Cyber Security expert so the state employees individuals with regional responsibilities and they provide Technical Assistance to counties and municipalities. This is the kind of Innovative Program that will help bolster our cybersecurity defenses and improve how states conduct elections. Its also a model that the eac would like to help amplify nationwided for funding support such an effort. Unfortunately, not all the news is good, as you know the threat of foreign adversaries remains real and ultimately our state and local Election Officials do not have the resources to thwart a nation state actor and that is why we must take action to implement policies to deter adversaries abroad such as a real sanctions regime. Additional funding is crucial to allow states to continue to make necessary improvements that increase the strength and resiliency of our election systems. When we talk about Election Administration we are talking about the infrastructure of our democracy, to make meaningful and lasting change requires a consistent investment over time. It cannot just be about 2020 or any one election, but about all of our elections going forward. During a Senate Rules Committee i shared a discovery that the eacs operating budget of 7. 95 million 7. 95 million is less than what kansas city spends on potholes. One city with the population of 500,000 people invests more to protect its residents car tires and alignment than our country invests in the only federal agency dedicated completely to improving Election Administration and helping more than 200 million registered voters cast their ballot. I thank you for your time and im happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank the witnesses and i ask unanimous consent that my Opening Statement be entered into the record. Ill begin by recognizing myself for five minutes and let me start before i start that, thank vice chair of the committee mary scanlon for providing while i was testifying at another committee. In 2016 our elections were attacked. Three years later our Intelligence Community is universally confirmed that foreign actors have redoubled their action to attack the 2020 elections f theyve cut programs to safeguard our elections, his chief of staff, for example, apparently issued instructions not to mention secuelection secy in front of the president , hes eliminated the cybersecurity position on the National Security council and dramatically down sized two teams fighting foreign election interference. The president s 2020 budget proposed cutting funding for cybersecurity and infrastructure our main Election Security agency even further. The president is handicapping our agencies from securing our elections. Most disturbing, the latest threat to our elections comes from the president himself. The president zelensky of ukraine to interfere in our elections and this isnt the first time. 2016, President Trump then a candidate, publicly encouraged russia to illegally hack his adversarys emails. This past june, president said on National Television that on his adversary he would take it. Just this month, President Trump publicly suggested that, quote, china should start an investigation into the biden, closed quote. I want to be clear. I believe it is unacceptable to ask foreign adversaries to interfere in our elections, if we undermine the government the way adversaries work for them. The president s own officials agree. Ambassador sondland testified, quote, let me state clearly, inviting a Foreign Government to undertake investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming foreign election would be wrong, closed quote. Each of you sitting here today are responsible for protecting the Public Integrity and Public Confidence in our elections and i would like to hear from you in turn, do you think its appropriate for the president of the United States to ask a Foreign Government to investigate his political opponent in the elections. Mr. Masterson . Yes or no . No. Ms. Flores . No, sir. Mr. Hickey . Im not going to comment on the president s activity, but we are committed to confronting violations. Never mind this president to ask for a Foreign Government to investigate opponents in an election . I am focused on enforcing the criminal law. Mr. Hovland . No. On approximately june 16th quote, on approximately june 2016, the gru, a Russian Intelligence Organization compromised the network of the Illinois State board of elections and, quote, gained access to a database containing information on millions of registered illinois voters. Closed quote. The Russian Hackers successfully breefrped the databases and failed to alter and delete voting records. Last month i asked expert witnesses to ask if the possible impact if the russian his been able to alter the databases. The former director of the Security Council during bush and clinton said that would be devastating because tens of thousands of voters could have been turned away at the polls. Our Intelligence Community confirmed that the threat of this again is very real. Indeed, the white house has intentionally cut your budget and cut your staff going into an election our Intelligence Community has confirm side under the biggest threat that our nation has seen. The Inspector General said that the Staff Shortages are making it difficult for dhs to do its job. Mr. Masterson, say that in 2020 on election day, the county reports that the Voter Registration poll book is incorrect, resulting in long lines and many voters being turned away like what we saw in durham. What is the specific plan for how dhs will ensure that it is immediately informed on any such issues on election day. What is the plan to remedy any such briefs that occur and do you have sufficient staff to protect against these types of threats . Thank you, mr. Chairman, for the question. That preparation begins long before election day and the work were doing now with state and local Election Officials across the country. At its core it is to build resilience nap is that ability to detect if there is an issue with the voter roles and identify what the issues are and thats the purpose of our items like the table top to vote exercise and to work with state and local officials to when and if they identify that information how theyll communicate it both with the local Election Officials and their jurisdiction, with the federal government and what processes they and we have in place to respond. For instance, dhs has Incident Response capabilities both remotely and teams that can come and support Election Officials in annes ticipation of reportin incidents. Were working with state and local Election Officials on preparations. For instance, having in place provisional materials and theyre prepared to administer provisional balance and ensure that every voter has the ability to cast their vote and know that their vote was counted as cast. Are you confident that you have the funding and the available so that should a large county, lets say in a key state is successfully hacked and the voter rule was and give whatever was necessary so we dont have a long, postelection dispute over a couple hundred votes not being cast . I think the level of funding starting with the 33 million we got last year it allows us to maintain that level of support in order to ensure that Election Officials have what they need as they head into election. Yes. Thank you very much, my time has expired. The gentleman from ohio . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Weve wasted so much time this year in a bogus russian collusion allegation, and on various messaging bills which are ultimately not going to go anywhere that its nice that we actually have departments of justice and the fbi before us to talk about a real issue and thats protecting americas elections from foreign influence. There are various pieces of legislation that would, i believe, help better protection our elections in the future. For example, im an original cosponsor of hr3442 which would deny entry into the United States. Any individual who interferes with our election. Lets hope that this committee can Work Together in a bipartisan fashion so that our elections are the Gold Standard and what the rest of the world looks to is how you do it and how you get it right. We generally bend that gold standa standard over the years so we have to get back to that. Ms. Flores, ill start by asking a question that relates to hr 3442, the legislation that i just mentioned. Whats the standard for determining what kind of content posted by Foreign Agent or agents that rises to the level of being a foreign influence operation . Is there a certain type of verbage or rhetoric that the fbi looks for and do you think engaging in such behavior online should bar an individual from entering the United States . Thank you, sir, for your question. I will start by saying that the fbi does not content or Police Information on the internet. That is certainly not our job and not something that we plan to get into. What we look at is actually ney nefarious actors. So if weve identified a foreign actor who is participating in foreign influence operations and as part of those operations seeks to propagate this information and post derogatory content and that is of interest to us, but we do not start with content and work our way back. Mr. Hickey, would you agree with that and is there anything you would like to elaborate on that . No. The d. A. D. Got it exactly right. We focus known actors and tips of providers in a way that helps them make determinations under their terms of service. Is there anything that the department of justice is doing to work with social Media Companies in advance of the 2020 elections . Principally through the fidif, but we also support the fidifs efforts and sometimes accompany them with working with the providers. Are there any other countries other than russia that you have seen that or that you believe is showing some interest in disrupting our lechs elections 0 or in the future . General . We have spoke ben foreign influence activity, malign foreign influence activities from china and we are certainly concerned about other, obviously. Weve seen actions by other nations like ushturkey and ukra. What was your agencys role in securing the 2018 congressional midterm elections and what specific efforts were made in that effort . Thank you, sir. Our role as it is now in helping to secure the 2018 midterm elections was to provide information sharing support and services to state and local Election Officials to help them manage risk to their system. So we started by building the trusted relationships with state officialses that are kept skal role in elections and by providing value that the Services Helped them identify and manage the risk to their systems and so were doubling down on those efforts by 2020 to reach the local elections and sheryl in ohio and sharing she needs to manage risk to her systems. Thank you very much. And im getting close to being out of time, but miss floris, let me ask you this, would you agree that the fbis reputation was significantly damaged by political bias against the president , President Trump specifically, that was exhibited by a number of toplevel officials in your organization . Sir, im not going to comment on damage or reputation damage. I think it very much damaged. Its unfair to the rest of the organization because the fbi is truly a great organization, one of the best in this nation. Thank you very much. I yield back. The gentleman yields back. I think peter struzok acted in the highest interest of the gove government workers. Thank you to the witnesses for not only your testimony, but your service to our country. It is recognized and appreciated. Just a note to the gentleman from ohio, the ed are the bill that hes co sponsored about denying visas to those that are interfering in our election, will be made part of the shield act through a managers amendment and i just wanted him to know that that im taking that good idea and moving it forward. The Mueller Report describes evidence that the thentrump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort shared with a russian operative a campaign and this is a quote from the report, strategy for wing democratic votes in midwestern state, unquote, and quote, unteurnal polling data o the campaign. Ive always thought, what was going on there . Why the internal polling date to this russian agent. Miss floris, i would not ask you to comment to that, but generically, why would a campaigns internal polling strategy for battleground states be helpful to someone who was seeking to impact our elections and specifically, what could a hostile actor do to such information with any campaign if they got internal polling data . Thank you, maam, for that question. Ill answer from a strategic perspective. When you look at countries like china and russia, you take a Foreign Government approach and theyre not only looking at our federal elected officials and theyre looking at state and local elected officials, as well because any one of those individuals can potentially influence policy moving forward. Because they take this approach, any bit of information they can inform their decisions and how they move on their operations. On the surface it may not seem of benefit, rest assured that china and russia will get information that they deem potentially as valuable. You all arent have been candidates and one of the things you know, that you could do ads, but if you were in interesting polling data, you would arent do a pell without getting caught. The only way to get this information that had legitimately done a poll. A report this month was released by the Senate Intelligence committee on russian interference in our elections and it said that the russian government used facebooks geographic targeting features to channel advertisements to audiences in specific locations and about 25 of the ads purchased by ira were targeted down to the state and city and university level, for example in michigan and wisconsin. They were targeted with advertisements overwhelmingly focussed on t focussed on the subject of Police Brutality to focus on one direction or another. Mr. Hickey, if a campaign made its internal information such as polling data readily available to a Foreign Government, that then used it to target a voters via social media, would that be something the department of justice would investigate or is there no law that would allow or stimulate an investigation . So there are two basic categories of laws, one i know and one um less an expert in. I dont know whether a Campaign Finance, public corruption fraud or other statutes would apply. With respect to the National Security statutes, they tend to focus whether an american is acting as an agent of a Foreign Government, meaning under the direction or control of the Foreign Government. In the example you would have to analyze whether the american is the reverse of that, whether theyre directing, controlling or procuring in which case they wouldnt be an agent of the Foreign Government. Well, i will just note that we will have an opportunity to in the near future, to make this clear by approving the shield act which would make it, would prohibit the sharing of internal data, Campaign Data by an American Campaign with agents of a foreign power so that you would have a very clear basis to proceed on that, and i hope that we can get a strong bipartisan support for this measure, and with that, mr. Chairman, my time has expired and i yield back. The gentle lady yields back, the gentleman from arizona. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I, you know, i would love to spend this time talking about Election Security. Im prepared to ask these question, but when we come to these hearings and its impeachment all the time. Thats what it is. This committee was actually, we were told by the chairman in the impeachment inquiry, but here we sit. If you want to ask the questions or you want to mischaracterize the conversation you probably ought to get down into the closed hearing downstairs. You cant get in because ive tried to get in. When i hear the chairman open up with his Opening Statement about the ukrainian phone call and suggest that the president asked president zelensky and ive read the transcript, you can characterize it any way you want to, and i would suggest that isnt the proper characterization. The telephone itself mentioned crowd strike, the ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, and that was the was what President Trump was asking that president zell know ski look into. When he mentions biden heres my question. Weve got fbi here and doj there, do you recognize a person who has admitted criminal con dushth because that other person is a potential witness in an upcoming election. What do you think . I think nations should follow facts and law where they lead in the course of criminal investigations. Regardless of whether theyre a potential political candidate or not . Regardless of status or without fear or favor. When i also hear, the other thing they were subjected to a lot and if i ask questions and the chairman doesnt like the responses or the statement i make, when im done he will offer his comment on it. Thats why he said peter strzok representsed the highest ideals or highest standards of the agency. Thats really unusual because normally if he wants to make that comment hes going ask somebody else to yield some time to him so he can rebutt the comment that he disagreed with, but that happens perpetually here because its convenient. Got a mike, im the chairman, and i can do whatever i want. I think mr. Strzok does exactly the opposite. His misconduct actually reflected poorly and has caused Much Division and heartache in the country and thats just the way it is. We focused a lot on russian interference in the 2016 election, the malign foreign influence of the russians. Are there other nation states that engaged in 2016 and might engage in 2020 elections . Sir, ill hit on the one big country that were focusing is outside of russia and that is certainly china. Make no mistake, china is aggressively foreign influence operations. They do implement a different tactic than the russians. They certainly prefer a face to face interaction. They use economic levers. Their end goal is to seat us as a global super power. So as we roll into 2020, we are a threat and we are also aggressively look at china, as well . Do you see other states beside sides russia that was tin vofled and i believe it was 2017. In fact, in the doj and dhs found that any identified activities have the integ yity or security of the Political Campaign infrastructure used in the 2018 midterm elections and that goes on what you said, ms. Floris that there was no evidence that the vote was actually changed through the system. Mr. Hovland, ive seen your biography. You previously worked on Voter Registration list and can you tell us the importance of states maintaining lists that are uptodate . Absolutely. Thank you for the question, sir. So the national Voter Registration act or nvr assets out a process and that ensures that individuals are able to get registered and when someone is no longer in a jurisdiction it gives them the proper way to clean those roles. It a lues jurisdictions to save money and ensures that the right people are where they need to be. My times expired. The gentleman yields back and the young lady from texas is recognized. I thank the chairman and Ranking Member for this hearing and the witnesses for your service as a nation. Let me ask the question for each of you, please. How confident are you that we will have an impeccable, safe and secure election in 2020 from the work that you have now done on the federal level . Mr. Matheson . Without intrusion from foreign operative, mr. Matheson . Thank you for the question, maam. Anyone thats run an election can it will you theres no such thing as an impeccable election, right . The goal is absolutely to build resilience and i am confident the 2018 election was more secure than 20 cane and 2020 will be more secure and resilient thanks to the late and local officials. The rest of you in pon sentence after ms. Floors tell you. I am notting everything we have toward the Election Security. I would e koishgs mr. Mafrter son to say that afling the hard work that state and local officials are doing to address this. Even though i appreciate mr. Math sons comment,y think the people are very old, about how secure ary and proceed to raise the question with mr. Hickey in light of the fact that there seem to be some loophole in how security is going to be and what is the approach of the doj in prosecuting and being proactive for what intrusions may occur in the 2020 election . We will be very proactive maam, how we handle information and how a campaign will be targeted and getting victim notifications to the right people and following up and i think were in a better position now than we were in 2016 both as a matter of policy and our sensitivity to the importance of that. You have a sufficient number of lawyers and doj prosecutors and resources to be ready for the massiveness of the 2020 president ial election and other federal elections . I think we are well position and said the budget for 2020 includes Additional Resources for the sections. I supervise that will improve our standing in that regard. I want to congratulate congresswoman laughlin for the work of her committee on the question of shielding us with this kind of intrusion congratulating her on my legislation that mr. Johnson and i introduced in april of this year, hr22a 3. The language in particular says if a candidate or individual affiliated with a candidate knowing he knowingly receives a source is a foreign age epts nt of a foreig power, the individual may refuse the office and notify the federal bureau of investigation not later than 72 hours after receiving the offer. Ms. Flois, what if this legislation passed, but really its intents should be acted upon by the fbi, what infrastructure do you have to ensure a Quick Response to any reporting of this kind of activity . The fbi, you have to ensure a Quick Response to any reporting of this kind of activity . By the fb do you have to ensure a Quick Response to any reporting of this kind of activity . Infrastru ensure a Quick Response to any reporting of this kind of activity . Thank you, maam, for the question. When it hits those four categories that i spoke about in the begin, the subversive nature, the coercive and criminal nature of it the fbi would respond as we do in any investigation with the full might of the not only Foreign Influence Task force and hundred of analysts and the 56 field offices who are working the foreign influence threat day in and day out. We will use the tools that we have in the tool box. Have you ramped up your staff for the 2020 election . Given up funding for stamp to deal with the potential of this reporting . Maam, we can always use more resources, but rest assured we are putting everything we can against this threat and facing it with absolute determination. Mr. Matheson, i sit on the Homeland Security committee and we appreciate the deep dive that you all have taken. So give me an understanding of how you have as a priority efficiently sharing actionable intelligence and identifying threats. How have you ramped up that very important part of your work . Yeah. Absolutely. I would highlight two areas, maam. The first is the buildout of the election infrastructure information sharing and Analysis Center. This is the hub of information sharing that we use to reach state and local officials and we have all 50 states as members of the isac as well as 2500 local Election Officials and this ensures that actionable, timely information is reaching the field so that they can take the steps they need to manage risk to their systems. The second is our continued push with the Intelligence Community to provide clearances and classified briefings whether through secure video teleconferences or inperson as well as working with private sector Threat Intelligence authorities. Weve worked with private Sector Companies to provide briefings to the state and local Election Officials about what theyre seeing internationally. So were exploring all avenues and trying to find efficient ways to get this information to officials. Thank you. I yield back. The gentle lady from arizona . Thank you, mr. Chairman. My first question is for miss flors, does anyone at the fisa affidavits or applications . No, maam. And looking back at the fbis activities investigating the 2016 election it has been reported that the fbi never obtained the servers from the Democratic National committee that had allegedly been hacked by rush a instead on relying on image copies. First of all, is that correct . Maam, i cant speak to that, sorry. Can someone else on the panel speak to that . Y maam. We got the information that we required for our investigation and its pretty common for us to work with a security vendor in connection with a investigator of computer intrusion. Can any one of you answer does the dnc strike still have possession of the clinton servers . I dont know what they have possession of now. Does anyone on the panel know . All right. My next question is for mr. Hickey, and i than mr. Chabot asked you what other countries have shown an interest in disrupting the 2020 election, but what other country his shown an interest or tried to interfere in the 2016 election . Based on what ive read both from what the ic has put out and also investigations by congress, what ive seen only refers to russia that im aware of. And then earlier there was an investigation by chairman nadler and i want to clarify what you think if you think its appropriate for a president of the United States to ask a Foreign Government to investigate a previous election interference, and i guess id like all of you to answer that question. Can you repeat the question, maam . Im sorry. Do you think its appropriate for the president to ask a Foreign Government to investigate previous election interference, you know, if there was election interference going on, you know, to ask if you know, if theres anything he thinks was unlawful going on in other country, to ask the other country to help to determine if there was something unlawful happening . I think its appropriate to understand any attempts at interference in our elections so we can continue to work to build resilience in the process. The fbi is interested in any criminal violation so long as there is the foreign angle to the foreign influence operations. Thank you. Ill give the same answer i said before. I dont opine on the criminal, but i focus on the criminal law. Think its important to understand what occurred our election so that Election Officials have the information they need to prepare for future elections. Thank you, and i yield back my time. The gentle lady yields back. The gentleman from tennessee. In 2016, i understand there were reports that i think were sound that russia tried to interfere with a lot of state election roles, maybe all of them. Anybody here aware of those reports . Mr. Masterson, you seemed to be first to go to the buzzer . Probably foolishly, sir. Thank you. Yeah. Dhs in coordination with the fbi released an information product out to state and local Election Officials that stated that based on the information we have as far as the activity in 2016 that the pattern of behavior, it is likely that the russian govern the russian actors conducted at least research on election entities across all 50 states. That doesnt necessarily mean that they attempted to access the systems. It could be as simple as a Google Search to understand who runs elections in that state, but based on the information that we and the Intelligence Community have that it is assumed that they were at least researching all 50 States Election system. And why would they have done that . Presuf ably just to understand how elections are run across the United States. Information. Kind of spring training . Yeah. Anybody else have knowledge of that . Have any other thoughts about it . No . How about florida . Were there not reports that two different jurisdictions and voting systems were contacted by the russians . Mr. Hickey . So i think we have briefed florida officials on activity targeting systems and leading to successful intrusions into county, but i think its important to be clear. Weve also reached the conclusion that there was no Material Impact on registration or vote counting based on the evidence that weve seen. So i think it is important to be clear about that. Based on what happened in 2016 and based on what mr. Mueller told us that they were looking to be involved in our 2020 election, are you confident that we have given our funds directly to the states that they will use them to work against russian and cyber interference and protect those state systems . Im happy to talk about that. So at dac we distributed the 380 million from fy18 and as i mentioned in my Opening Statement it appears that the vast majorist that will be spent. Weve seen over 90 of that going toward improving security. Again, whether thats replacing outdated equipment and hardening systems and implementing audits and the states have done a number of things and variations of how elections are administered from state to state there have been different priorities. We have 24 state and local Election Officials to identify priorities for that funding and what weve seen is states have taken that information which is databased on our work with the states on where we lie and ill give you a very specific example. Prayer to the 2016 election, the state of wisconsin had all of its local Election Officials for the statewide database which may seem unremarkable until you realize they have 1800 local election jurisdictions in wisconsin and 3200 users with the database and thats a focused, and targeted step base level that theyve taken to use the money. Director krebs has emphasized the importance of protecting the campaigns based on what happened in 2016 with the dnc, the Clinton Campaign and stolen emails. He said shame on us if were not ready this time around. Have you consulted with the president or anyone involved in his Reelection Campaign . Sir, we have made contact with not just the Trump Campaign, but campaigns across the president ial election president ial campaigns to make sure that theyre aware of our services and information sharing responsibility. Mr. Mulvaney did not contact you as he did your superior and say this is a very sensitive subject for the president. Dont mention it or dance around it or whatever . No, sir. Thats great. I want to thank the fbi and the Justice Department, as well, and you all are stalwarts and the american system of government and the rule of law, and i would have to disagree with some of the previous statements made that some individuals within the organization is responsible for hurting the organization. I think an individual who is the president of the United States was the one that caused it by questioning those peoples actions and down and making statements that were adverse to both the fbi and the Justice Department which we should uphold. I yield back the balance of my time. The gentleman yields back and the gentleman from florida . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I wish this truly were a sincere hearing on Election Security, if it were we might be marking up some of the Bipartisan Legislation that members of the committee have worked on including the House Resolution 3529 by congresswoman murphy, mr. Deutsch, ms. Powell, myself to have greater connectivity prior to any intrusion or we might be marking up the legislation by mr. Ratcliffe and mr. Hines joined by mr. Collins and mr. Qana 3238 that would create greater consequence. Thats not what this is about and this is about smearing the president of the United States and delegitimizing this historic election. Just moments ago the chairman said peter strzok was acting in the highest tradition of Government Service. I believe you are holding a job once he held, and aki is havingr with a coworker, on. Im not going to comment on that. Are there regulations on that . You hold mr. Strzoks job. Are you saying you dont know if its against fbi policy to have an extra marital affair with a coworker. I hold a slightly different job. Im the d. A. D. Branch and not that were held to a different standard and im not going to comment on whether or not Peter Strzoks behavior was out of conduct. Is it at the highest service of the fbi to engage with coworkers. You should know that if youre coworkers. Sir, im not going to comment on that. We do not have confidence that strzoks decision to prioritize the investigation, so if the Inspector General didnt have confidence in the way that someone prioritized something would that be acting in the highest traditions of Government Service . Sir, im not going to comment on that. The oig found its not only indicative of a bias state of mind and more suspiciously implies the willingness to take action to impact the electoral process. This is antithetical to the core values of the fbi and the department of justice. If someone, anyone, is engaging in behavior that is antithetical to the core values of the fbi and the department of justice is that person acting in the highest traditions of Government Service . Sir, we have an entire inspection division. We have the oig and there are several measures in place that take into account those questions. Im not going to answer those questions from the position im in. Its just really striking that someone in the Senior Leadership of the fbi, like an unwillingness to be critical of conduct that was so detrimental to our country and as people all over america are looking at the corruption that negatively impacted our president and the institution of the presidency, it doesnt really inspire confidence that current officials from the fbi say hey, you know what . Its a bad idea to be having affairs with your colleagues and to be undermining the trust that people have and to be prioritizing investigations over politics, but nonetheless, here we sit and in fact, here we do sit. It was more than a month ago, mr. Chairman that you announced an impeachment inquiry in this committee and i believed you that our committee would be engaged in that process, but as we sit here today, three other committees are in the basement of the capitol conducting secret interviews, engaging in selective leaks and you have chairman schiff coming out and having his theatrical perform ae ances that didnt occur. Regardless of how people feel about the president and this impeachment, one would at least think that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee announces the launch of an Impeachment Committee would be able to participate in that investigation, but when ive gone to participate and mr. Biggs has gone to participate and others have gone weve been locked out. It is my sincere hope that you would take up the cause not just of someones partisan ambition to impeach the president , but that you would take up the cause of our committee and advocate for our ability to participate. One can only suspect that the house Judiciary Committee has been dealt out of the hand of impeachment is because Speaker Pelosi didnt like the outcomes that were coming out of the committee when the current chairman was running it. It wasnt a surprise to the country when you brought in mr. Lewandowski. House democrats didnt know what to do with it. There were promises that this was going to sway the public. This would create a flood of support for impeachment and that was obviously something that didnt hold to bear, and so please stand up for our committee and lets stop with this busy work. If we markup bills. Lets markup real bills. I yield back. The gentleman yields back. The gentle lady from washington. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank our witnesses for being here today. I would hardly call this busy work to protect our elections. I wish our colleagues on the other side would be as concerned with Election Security. Back in july the Senate Select committee on intelligence released its bipartisan support on russian interference on the 2016 elections. Quote, russian government affiliated cyber actors conducted an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure in the runup to the 2016 elections, end quote and they called for sweeping action to protect our 2020 elections. With elections with 378 day away its crucial we move quickly. All of you are responsible and you are no doubt aware that a significant concern of securing our elections is that foreign actors will attack election reporting or the results of elections. Take the following hypothetical. Florida reports that candidate x1 after counting the votes. The next morning florida Election Officials report that the elections were tampered with and candidate y won. What is being done at the federal level to first prevent attacks on our Election Results and second, if such an attack occurs to ensure Public Confidence in the reporting of our elections . Mr. Master son, lets start with you and move to flores, hickey and hovland. The ones you are referencing are areas that weve worked with state and local Election Officials to secure and understand. First and most important thing to understand that all of the folks on the committee here understand is that Election Night results are, in fact, unofficial result, that there is a canvas process that goes on after election day and so ensuring that voters have that information, understand the unofficial nature of results and that theres an entire reconciliation process thatof rs and theres an entire reconciliation process following election and to ensure the correctness. A top priority for us, and thats got a debility of the results, and ensuring an effective auditing of those results. Its critical to ensure not that they won or, lost but to reassure the public that their vote was counted as cast. Thats two areas of high priority for us, working with state and local officials to empower them and talk about the steps they are taking, to offer transparency on the back. And i know election exit officials take that very seriously. Anyone want to add anything . I would add that in a circumstance that we know or have an indication that the state has been targeted, its really important we get the state officials at the right level with a sense of urgency so they can do whatever they can to mitigate on their systems. Sir . I would echo what mr. Masterson said and add that the election Assistance Commission doing a part of the work includes hosting a training for idea facials, which is relevant to this topic, working with them on improving audit processes, and certainly think that the issue there are a number of responsibilities that Election Officials have, and i believe that the election Systems Committee should be more empowered work on those but the reality is, as i mentioned in my Opening Statement, is that we are a 7. 95 Million Dollar agency, we have one lawyer, we have one financial person for since its inception the election Assistance Commission has been kicked around the key political football and weve never been empowered or empowered or fund and would actually help elected officials and the way right, now in this time, we see the need for the federal clearinghouse that the easy was created to be and i would ask you all to help make that possible. Thank you. As a senior cybersecurity advisor, how have you engaged with local, state and National Media outlets to ensure the unofficial vote reporting is protected from malicious interference, what Media Networks specifically have you met with, and have any refused to meet with you and with new measures are you taking a in 2020 that were not applied in 2016 and 2018 . Thank you maam for the question. The first is that the associated press, the team that handles the result is on Election Night is a the Election Night is a member river were coordinating council which is the council that we work with on providing support and services and information sharing, so they have been an active participant in that coordinating council to the extent of the threat and risk they can take to secure the results for the reporting and i know hes taking that very seriously. Secondly, as we held a tabletop exercise with members of the National Media prior to the 2018 election to talk about some scenarios that can play out in house at being exchanged not just from state and local officials but Media Companies, Political Parties and others to ensure that the media have access to the information they need before they report on the results or other items. Heading into 2020, we anticipate engaging Media Outlets individually that have a tabletop exercise again heading into the 2020 election to work through the scenarios and ensure they have the information they need. I yields back. The gentleman from virginia. I want to thank the witnesses for being here. I am concerned and cosponsored the bill which would amend the immigration act to those that have engaged in improper interference in elections inadmissible to the u. S. And also cosponsored h. R. 3238 which would prohibit interference. I want to go ahead and ask in your testimony you say we do know our adversaries are trying to influence Public Opinion and electoral in advance of the election. Youve mentioned in your testimony our enemies are influencing the Public Opinion in various social media. What electoral processes, what efforts to interfere are you aware of . Thank you for the question. One thing i want to highlight is that countries that russia and china prove they are a threat its not just based on the electoral cycles and operations, is essentially always present. And it comes to the electoral process, you can look at some of the voter suppression. The whole concept of pushing out false and information, of highlighting, places to go but are actually not true, the concept of disinformation that we have seen the russians focus on. That in and of itself can interfere in the process. But nothing to the extent of actively trying to hack into or interfere with Electoral Systems . We havent seen anything specific regarding hacking into the systems of the 2020 election. Thank you. I would yield the remainder of my time. Thank you for yielding. Im curious if theres a unanimous consent request. First is the request to be entered into the record and email on the 30th of may titled documents on the Ukrainian Party of the regions. Without objection. I also see to enter into the record of the article to summer 12, 2018 the ukrainian corporals disclosed disclosure meddling in the u. S. Elections. Without objection. Also, from 2018 from the post, the publication of the payments violated law from interfere with elections and court rules. Without objection. What is happening is this a law firm that hires and it seems to email to her husband about issues with manafort and ukraine and then works its way into the u. S. Election dynamic and the court in kyev ruled that the activities to disclose the activities in the United States constituted election interference and was illegal under the ukrainian law. Does anyone on the panel that has a reason to disagree with the conclusion of the Ukrainian Court that the constituted . So, no one has reacted on any basis to disagree with this and the record reflect that. So, my question is what are we doing as a government to prevent future election meddling like that which ukraine engaged in where information was disclosed in the United States unlawfully in the foreign jurisdiction and then entered into the enter into the bloodstream of the politics . Thank you for the question. I will go back to what i said previously. The fbi is not in the position to police content on the internet. That being said that they can identify it for an actor regardless of the country who is trying to push out this information with the end goal of showing discord, discounting the process and it is done in some sort of a undeclared criminal matter that is where it becomes an interest to the fbi. The trick is identifying that known foreign actor we cannot work back from content. If we find that for an actor behaving in these obligations and part of the validation tells disinformation yes that would work with the providers to provide as much actual intelligence as we possibly can. In this case it looks like we must know the actor because the court ruled the disclosure of the information was illegal so is there anything the fbi is doing now to follow up on the decision that there was illegal meddling in the United States that emanated from ukraine . I cant address anything related to the possibility on the existence or nonexistence of an fbi investigation. It would seem my, colleague said this a few days between now and the upcoming election i hope sincerely that this meddling is being identified and pursued by the government and i would yield back. The gentleman from florida. Thank you mr. Chairman for holding todays hearing. And thanks to the witnesses for being here. We know that the russians interfered and that the National Security experts have warned that they will do it again in 2020, 2020 primaries are fast approaching so we are running short on time to ensure every state is taking the necessary steps to harden the differences and to guard against this generally. Florida was one of the fewer than 20 states that still had electronic machines to verify the ballots in 2016 and they are moving in a different direction between 2016 and 2018 they dropped from 24 to four to move completely to the paper verified systems under way. After learning some of the systems were in 2016 they expected a strong response to bolster the security and we expect that whenever it is done and of olympic coordination with state and counties targeted by the Foreign Governments and other bad actors. According to the report the russian theory agency was able to gain access to the network of at least one florida county government. Subsequently, members of our congressional delegation requested a briefing from the lawenforcement agencies and were informed that the networks of at least two counties that have been compromised. Most recently, the report by the republicanled Senate Intelligence committee suggest as many as four counties may have been successfully attacked. Apparently no systems were accessed, only the registration rules, but whatever the number infected, weve got to learn the lessons and guard against the vulnerabilities before next years elections in florida clearly worked on its need to improve the auditing procedures, but we cannot do that alone. Certain breaches in 2016 were not immediately detected. What signs should Election Officials look for, what should they be trained to look for on election day to ensure there are no attacks and how are you working with state officials to train them to detect such signs . Thank you for the question, sir. It starts long before election day. You may be looking for those signs and i will talk about our activity there, but there are indicators that Election Officials are aware of and can be attuned to. But to our information sharing and Analysis Center targeting election infrastructure and the state of florida was the first state to deploy this across all county governments. To reach protect and recover from this. In our hearing witnesses stressed the importance of the interconnected systems and we heard any device that touches these must be safeguarded to the Device Security management centralized and i would like to hear from each of the witnesses what your organization is doing to help centralize and streamline the security process. We will start with you. Yes. So, essentially if the Systems Commission we are participating in the government coordinating council. We consistently work to put out best practices, but again sorted through our capacity moving beyond our statutory requirements is very limited as we have the world series coming to washington i would note that if we were a Major League Baseball player we would be the 173rd highest paid player. We would be a middle reliever. We have no lack of ambition to take on these challenges and help, but we need the resources to do it. Appreciate the world series reference. Im going to answer a bit of analogy. We have a number of Department Components on the security. Weve got fbi agents in the field and headquarters, prosecutors in the field, public corruption prosecutors, National Security prosecutors, computer crime prosecutors. All of them potentially touch on this issue and so it is on us to train them so they are aware of each other in a coordinated and that is what we are doing this weekend at the end of the week rather the end of the month the fbi is putting together an all hands on meeting with agents around the country to train them including on how to react and relate to state officials when it comes to the victim notifications. Thank you for your question. I distrust the task force whose purpose was to be with you just asked to coordinate the efforts across the enterprise as it relates to Election Security. We have election crimes coordinators across all of the field offices whose primary goal is to interact with local officials. Leading up to today of the election we have got our cyber task forces across all 56 of our field offices and we are working to increase our ci task forces as well. And the Foreign Influence Task force really is the hub brings all of the efforts together again leading up to, during and after. Thank you for the question, sir. Across the cybersecurity and researchers, at the agency, over a third of our ambiguities in 2018 engaged in Security Work across the United States. We have field representatives protecting the security advisers advisers. I appreciate the witnesses being here today. As the Intelligence Branch restrictive matter over the Intelligence Branch was one of our two operational, branches in the ig about Hillary Clintons private server being hacked. Do you know why you were not included in, that briefing . Time frame i e counterterrorism division. Until the fall of 2018 in the time frame i was in the counterterrorism division. So, you came into your current position after peter struck left. Yes, sir. Since the foreign influence headquarters component im concerned they ran two of the biggest cases in history as headquarters for special cases rather than the traditional way of running the cases in the field officers. As the Foreign Influence Task force running the cases from headquarters now . No, sir. Can you tell us why they were doing do while he was there . I cant speak to that since there is such a deal, about the influence peddling and 2016 and even the uk name after that that you would he would be a little bit concerned about the influence peddling when he was there, have you not looked into that at all in your current position . My focus is on the 2020 elections and moving forward. The creation of the task force happened in the fall of 2017, we are laserfocused on the election moving forward. The comment you dont think that there is anything to be learned from looking at what occurred in the 2016 election to help you prepare for whats going on and could go on in the 2020 election, really, you dont think theres anything to learn from history . There are always lessons to be learned and what what we have learned in 2016 and i can speak strategically on the threat across the entire u. S. And the community. We are now better engaged and collaborate far more on a daily basis and we are working with our social Media Companies. All of it from 2018 to put the best practices forward as we move into 2020. Since youre concerned about 2020, were you aware of dispatching to influence the election in 2016 . That wasnt my question. I didnt ask you that. I asked you did you know that is . Im not going to answer that question. I will be happy to go back and go into detail about the current investigations. You didnt say if you know a person. You are supposed to be telling us about 2020 and you cant even tell us about whether you know anything about people involved in 2016, it hurts the credibility when you cant do that. Well they run informants against Political Campaigns . We do not run sources either. We program as it relates to foreign influence. I have real concerns about the credibility of whats happening for 2020 if you cannot even tell us about ukraine. I am very disturbed and concerned. The gentleman yields back. The gentleman from california. Thank, you mister chairman. First of all thank you to the panel for being here today and service to our country. Trust in the election system is trust of democracy with cyberattacks time is of the essence. When Financial Institutions are attacked the militarys response within seconds is usually coordinated throughout the industry not institutions or individually but if not worldwide. Given the importance of american democracy i presume that now a lack of coordination among Government Agencies being one of the lessons learned. I assume we have a system in place now to coordinate that kind of information of a cyberattack. So a question to all of you. You are absolutely correct, as it relates to cyberwe have an extremely Strategic Plan so simply put i will allow my colleagues to add on but that responses jointly look at the fbi is a threat response of the crime has been committed we will open an investigation, dhs protects the vulnerability from cyberintrusion in and of itself. The cyber attack happens in seconds. So quickly, who is the lead, and if you dont have the lead, how do you feel get that information out to all of your investigative agencies, youre defense task force, instantaneously. Do you have that system in place . Mr. Masterson . Thank you for the question. Following 2016 and 2017, one of our Top Priorities was to work with state and local elected officials to establish protocols for exactly this reason. As you may be aware, in 2016, dhs due to the election space than not know who to call it the states if need be. We have points of contact and all the states, information sharing in all 50 states you have points of contact with each and every state. And more importantly, they know how to share information with us because the most likely people to report a cyber incident are the owners and operators has the information, are we talking silos here . Is the information into a street, so to speak . Do you have folks at the state level who you trust that you can work with to make sure you are all sharing the information on a realtime basis . Absolutely, sir. Thank you for the question. We have points in contact and trusted relationships across all 50 states, so that they feel comfortable sharing that information. Then we are able to take it not just the response of the incident, but the Technical Information in that response, and distributed broadly across the entire electric community, so they can take defensive actions or look for possible compromises across the entire election infrastructure. Thats the biggest area of improvement since 2016 is the amount information we are receiving from the state and local Election Officials on the record so the secretary of state from california calls you mr. How does that phone call get channel into the system to get a Quick Response . Or is it even a phone call . Do you have a digital system where somebody puts in, types in an alert saying, something is going on over here, certain viruses have been detected, so the rest of the country can essentially get on their toes . So, the secretary has been a brand called me regularly, theyre incredibly active and engaged with us. You described correctly, a report to one is report all across the federal government, in the operation center, we have members of the fbi, we have members of the Intelligence Community, we have members of the election information sharing Analysis Center, sitting on operations floor, such that as reporting comes and we are able to take that information, analyze, it supports the victim, and then begin the process of sharing information broadly across the sector. Let me shift very quickly. We mentioned earlier but it was not just about election day but that election period in california and it was in a month in three weeks, how do you ensure that whatever you begin to detect three weeks out is something that you can follow upon and is coordinated . Again, working through our Information Sharing Center as we began reporting if theres additional facts that were able to coordinate that with the whole of government and look for those trends and that information that would kick in in the sense. Ive been to a number of elections and i detected irregularities and in 2020, im walking door to door and i see Something Weird happening, who like . All depending on the activity that its a coordination private sector or individuals out there . From our perspective if you support any anonymous activity from the local election administrator and that its been initiated in addition we work with Border Protection in 2018 and will again in 2022 are points of contact on election day so that there is reporting and theres trends rebel to respond with Election Officials and the coordination to see what happens. I now recognize the distinguish vice chair and the speaker once again for the hearing in my absence. Thank you chairman. Miss flores, on october 3rd of the fbi with dhs an advisory to officials at the russian government would be using the tactic tactics to interfere in the 2020 elections and obviously were extremely concerned about that. Can you give us any idea when the fbi heard about these russian tactics and had time between the threat being identified and when the states were notified . Thank you for the question maam. I can ask in specifics about the reporting and all of to take that back but i will say as 2020 and 2018 it is our goal across the u. S. And the community to report and threat information as clearly as possible and take into account the sensitivity of the sources and methods of how that intelligence was collected. You talked a little bit above the Foreign Influence Task force that was funded in 2017 and describe how it was expired after the 2018 election and the growing list of foreign adversaries. Can you tell us what resources can you describe the people that were on the tax force from 2017 to the president and with these resources to do that job . Thank you maam for the question. Its a specific about the actual number of individuals on the task force and they are rolled into 2018 and we are going to search resources in 2020. One thing i will know is that individuals are not the only individuals that the fbi working for given that the various nature of it is so much more than what we do inside the house with criminal in cyber so theyre agents and professional staffers across 56 of our office in foreign influences are tied to foreign influence. Regarding your question about resources i happy to have more resources and the fbi is using that right now to mitigate this serious threat. The numbers between 2017 this because you dont have them. Its no security reason its focus only on russia and all global actors and its not necessarily a one comparison. Mr. Hickey, you mentioned one aspect of the efforts to disrupt influence operatives and the heart which requires people to act with our government so i guess we know that would include the guilty plea by Michael Flynn who was the security adviser and the commissions of the Trump Campaign manager Paul Manafort and richard gates and the possible involvement of mr. Giuliani who was there last week and the violations and those are the kinds of things that youre talking about . At the moment those are Campaign Finance allegations that they allege connection to a foreign location so the kind of activity that you want to be alert to. Its included there . At the moment, the charges are Campaign Finance allegations are there but stepping back from that specific case, there are indications of a foreign principle covertly try to influence our politics. Whether its Campaign Finance are an affair which would something that would be involved with. The one im really concerned about which is listed on the fara in for some actions is the one involving the russian nationals who worked on behalf of the russian government in 2016 election by manipulating social media to advocate for the Trump Campaign and against the Clinton Campaign. Does that include organizing political rallies and states like pennsylvania to represent two pictures of pennsylvania coal miners and slap them on these rally things and try to put them in a particular direction. Does doj have the resources to identify the prosecutors in those that i mentioned as we approach the 2020 election . We do because we use these resources to break the case. Unfortunately, i think the 2020 budget includes additional funding including the Counter Intelligence section which is devoted to foreign influence in addition to Cyber Threats and other rates. What about moving proactively before 2020 as its two years after the influence in 2016. As i said in my Opening Statement, its disrupting it and more rewarding and more important and we have put a lot of thought and to how to disrupt that and provide notifications to the public if there is factors and tried to make sure that we can be as educated as we could. And the gentleman lady from texas. Ms. Jayapal molded that the report in russian interference they campaign is what we apply for and various platforms for cyber attack with the companies and integrity and the cooperation with the tax actors and addressing those issues and as they said today, facebook remove the network and push backed accounts that these locals would come into political issues in swing states and praising President Trump in the attacking of former Vice President joe biden. Its a familiar threat that we saw in 2016 and appears to be repeating through 2020. The report we reference recommends they collaboration and the content sharing among social media platforms to defend against foreign information. This occurred with extremist content. My question is to mr. Master tin and miss flores. As they ever had your task force to cooperate between government and the sector as they did with violet an extreme is them . All tougher to my colleague at the fbi with the Security Initiative and the influence that works regularly off the social media and tech sector. I will be ready in 2020 . Absolutely. Yes. Thank you maam for the question. The Foreign Influence Task force is encouraging cajun with the sector and social Media Companies which are almost on a monthly basis and all we try to do is create a relationship with the National Intelligence and share with us information which have violated their terms with the primary in 2020. Do you have a specific task force which is got up to cooperate with each other . Its what the foreign influence and one of the eagles with social Media Companies. technical problem we want to work with them on a variety of products on what to look for and more importantly how to empower themselves and checked Voter Registration status and to make sure they understand when whats on their ballot and how the election process works and to be a trusted in their Election Officials so that they can head to the polls with confidence. Building on that effort in 2020 we focus on expanding that and one of the trusted voices is the governors fathers to engage in people and we have this information with resilience so theyre not responsive. I heard your testimony on that. He also said that you want to raise Public Awareness and with 8000 and 800 jurisdictions what have you testified to that but how are you really getting about 8800 jurisdictions that have to be on the lookout for this across the country and when i saw one of your testimonies. I think we were focused on the handful of states in these table topics and what are we doing to make sure that all 8800 of these distinctions had a distinct report with you on these issues . Thank you for the question. Its twofold. One is with the relationships with the state officials they reached so i mention my testimony to shift its initiative towards county elections enters victims of how to manage risk including how to talk to voters about the process. In voters expectations and the second is not just about the individual we conduct National Table topics in thousand of local Election Officials in coordination with their state Election Officials so chief officials participated over three days this year and next year wed and to subpoena level to talk exactly about what you say about how this information gets shared and how they get it back up to us so we have full awareness and push to understand what is the threat of risk in how to protect the system. Thank you mister chairman i yield back. Thank you mister chair for holding this important timely hearing and i want to thank each of the witnesses for their testimony and further service to our country. I must confess that i was disappointed by some and not all on this side of the aisle who chose to use their time what the integrity of for governor officials instead of talking today with these distinguished witnesses at the matter at hand and protecting our public and ensuring our elections and in your respective departments who work with a wide range of colleagues and i thank you. I reviewed the written testimony and miss flores in your testimony, you noted on page three and i believe do included this and youre verbal testimony in the 2018 election, social Media Companies and acted offense and authentic links to foreign influence and the Companies Made these decisions by dialoguing with the fbi and other agencies. I take from that that we have a robust relationship with the social Media Companies with the task force and other oppressive apparatus is with the doj. Are the terms are the terms . True yes sir. I understand that the task force then the fbi won four straight communities are taking steps theyre taking to protect our elections but part of what is the most disturbing for me and gives me the most pause with my colleagues is what you mentioned earlier is that its happening in realtime and foreign actors are with the disinformation that they are engaged and utilized in the social media that impacts your daily lives and its changing the way americans think and the way they interact with each other in the way they view Public Policy issues and im sure youre familiar with the report recently i was covered by cnn from the nra Coffee Campaign issued on october 21st 2019 and americans on both sides with polarizing issues ahead of the 2020 election. In tidily. Mister hickey are you familiar with this work . Yes sir. Well with unanimous consent i would ask this report be submitted to the record mister chair. Without objection. I will quote from this and in 2019 facebook and now to take down to 50 instagram accounts about u. S. And social publishers the 2020 election. They concluded the operation originated from russia and with Research Agency russian targeted u. S. The United States president ial election of 2016 and these accounts are attacking elizabeth warren, almost half of the length especially in florida and what they are doing is not that dissimilar what they did from before and divisive content and most of it posted by these accounts serve to reinforce hostility towards other groups or individuals and a sense of accounts posted on both sides with these divisive issues and Police Violence that was addressed by the senate and they hashtag some of the Police Brutality and black lives matter and hashtag blew lives matter and rural familiar with these postings from before. Miss flores . Yes sir. Mr. Hockey . Yes sir. The question i have. Clearly are a lot enforcement agents are working very hard to try to combat this information and it strikes me that the root cause or one of the root causes of this information is the reality of the accounts in the social media ways. There is a lot of answers of universal verification as opposed to having to be reactive working with the social Media Companies like facebook as a prime example and we can get it through cause and with eliminated so much of this information and disinformation the of the American Public. I like to get your sense miss breach flores i miss hickey that we discussed internally and something that you might recommend that would take up in a matter of discussion. Sir, i will agree with you that the added in the anonymity is a broad psycho security challenge and thats the reason why we have so many policies in respect to foreign influence and its a leading one and how do you address that is very tricky and now you have verification authenticity who is emailing the message that they claim to be and at the moment, we are not in a position to comment on legislation but we are trying to see indications that someone isnt who they claim to be along the lines of what they said and are trying to tie individuals and the providers to it with the animalization and the entities with the Internet Research but the court right now and theyre hoping to impose consequences for activity related issues the 2016. The gentlemans time has expired. Thank you mister chairman, thank you so much for convening this hearing today. Thank you to each and every one of you for being here. I think all of us would agree that this foundation of our democracy and protecting our ability to be able to vote and protect the voting infrastructure from foreign interference is paramount. In georgia, why represent we looked at before the 2016 election a russian agent visited the Fulton County and places i represent. Looking for vulnerabilities and appears that the agent didnt get access to our election system in 2016 but we continue to fix attacks this very day and it was reported that two computers were stolen from both the county there again and these continues computers contain Sensitive Information that relates to every single voter in georgia. As we take on these threats i want to make sure that we are looking to build a collaboration and transparency across the federal government with the states and for the american people. I want to ask each and every one of view of how we can increase this transparency while proving Election Security and ill start with you. Im curious about your thought about whether states should be treated differently than victims that persecute in terms of victims identities for. Example, the election system to florida counties were breached but the government has not identified which florida counties were breached. On one hand we want to encourage represent and talk about to report them and this specific information publicly with discourage such reporting and on the other hand we want to have confidence in our election system and want them to have confidence and transparency of we testify and im sorry were not here this morning but you testified that the exposure of influence ultimately may be one of the best ways to counter that so can you speak to how you think the federal government should now be disclosing such victim information in their own last them election. Thank you maam. I appreciate you nuance as it does implement complicate a lot of things and we do as the vice chair of the Committee Said that we want to encourage and guard the trust of the state and if theyre willing to call fbi and not worry then they are going to release their identities. I think two Core Principles and we think it is a matter of state officials to decide when they disclose to their publics what the threats to their particular infrastructure have been so we have leaders in florida to communicate with the voters in that state and say that we work with the fbi and we are going to leave it to that sovereign state and the second key principle that it is ultimately state level officials who are accountable for certifying the results so we are currently reviewing guidance on how to handle victim notification and the context of the election as not yet finalized but we anticipate we will continue those operators which will be local officials but will provide a heads up to the political accountable chief of staff election official so that theyre aware of what the fbi is doing at a local level. Mr. Masterson and mrs. Floris id like to hear for you on your transparency policies and more transparency where its actually needed. So, ill speak to that very briefly. As i mentioned prior, we establish communication with the local Election Officials on how it would be reported to speak to Party Systems or incidence and indicators of probably classified environment about these elections so they will not only take defensive measures but talk about the threat being real and secured the process so that they know that theyre taking it seriously and responding and i think thats where running elections really is critical. They feel that those running elections can be poll workers and can be reelection testing and they can watch postelection so how can we empower this information of whether its a threat for activity or with the voters as well. One thing i can add in addition to the panel. As i mentioned in the Opening Statement, when it comes to being transparent one of the strategies this to share intelligence and information as quickly as possible to our needs to receive that we probably should. The fbi fbi can make those an election securities pieces including individuals outside the members of this panel and one of these strategies which will share actual intelligence. Thank you. The time of the general lady is expired and now wished the chime of the chair of the pennsylvania. Representing to us a protecting our elections and we take this very seriously and i can see that you do to. For the viewing public we, have to department of Homeland Security and the fbi and the department of justice where we have this election interference assistance and youre so important in the front line and were here with you. Ill start with question quickly with directed to miss floris. On october eight just this one tonight is a 19 new produced the second volume of the russian interference and the elections because the government in response and it repaired reputed of the Counter Intelligence division and the fbi had an outside contractor with the russian influence activity on twitter which suggests quote, the fbi either lacked resources or was not quarantining the institution and miss floris, the Committee Report its concerning. Do you believe you have the resources with the fbi to investigate to protect in these elections . Thank you maam for that question. As i said, we always use more resources and we should have resources in the Counter Intelligence. We continue to engage with these officers to ensure that they are tracking the threat as closely as we are. How often are using this subcontractors or are you moving away from this issue of this Election Security . Maam, i cant speak specifically on the use of outside contractors and we do have contractors throughout many parts of the fbi and i cant speak specifically to how many are working on the influence threat. We love that information and you can shared with us. Can you tell us whether or not he would ever use an outside contract from russia, iran, china, north korea . Maam, i would defer that question to the resources in our security division. No problem. I like to ask each of the the same thing. What you have resources in your departments and use outside contractors . Ill start with mr. Masterson. Thank you maam. We have the resources we need to build on the success and continue to support the Election Officials. Certainly would nor resources and more response of nice we will have reports of the administration testing on quote we need to build on the success and i tougher you to the resources on security. Mr. Hovland . The commission absolutely does not have the resources that we need. I would note that the asked why 18 300 Million Dollars i went to the states was a first step did not provide to stay with the funding levels to solve all of the challenges that they faced. Weve seen people prioritizing from a number of things that state level of fictions can be and there are important to do that. Love that information and thank you for sharing that with us. The 2020 budget would increase funding from the Counter Intelligence section which isis provides and help to provide a line of the state ponce sponsored hiking. I dont think we employed contractors specifically for this area with the contractors working in the Justice Department and our admitted and not just explain but i will say they reflect our judgment with these particular Technical Expertise and what investigatory reviews and what have particular experience. Do you use any foreign contracts from russia . China . He ran . Those contractors need to be screened for his security clearance so they would be that it. Whats concerning to us and to me is the 2020 Budget Proposal which consists of especially troubling since it is the president ial here and new and Robert Mueller and others have said that the threat is persistent and being systematic and will answer this question will quickly and you talked about the disinformation can use these specific of this information that you are able and give us a concrete example of how voters were reformed . Thank you mister chairman. I talking leading to the 2016 election . Yes. I cant speak and specifics about that right now but i can take that question back. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we go to the general lady from texas. Thank you to our witnesses and we appreciate your presence here and youre work. Im still very concerned about the public should still be very concerned about our elections and 2020. We know that three years ago, russia was wildly successful in attacking our democracy by attacking our elections. Despite the information that we had and despite a unified voice of our Intelligence Committee to have a president who is cutting resources to our Election Security and it is stunning to me that the president of the United States would be willing to erode our Election Security instead of fighting to keep it safe. Our body machines are still outdated and many of the vulnerabilities we had today should all be very concerned. I hope you all will continue your work to confront struck the obstacles in the new public. With that said, we know special counsel mothers indictment against the russian amenities and in the way they interfered with our 2016 elections is by encouraging the minority to participate in the elections. A few Research Centers out in 2016, African American turnout was rocked by 20 despite the fact that we had record turnout in a country. The report detail of the strategy was used and African American communities and African Americans are from voting and what steps and why would you describe them from voting if you. What are focusing coronation and talking to them about how theyre being targeted with this information and where the source of information and regard to the election process would be and we created with working with various communities and groups so groups like the naacp to provide those other resources and will be targeted with this information and how to respond. Thank you for your question. Ill speak to my response about the literacy with the American Public and well show this to every American City of how and where to vote and your vote matters and you have the literacy to understand the truth and where you obtaining information. On the more practice on our engagement with income which is to share threat indicators and this information using their platforms. I continue that dialog that will roll into 2020. Its referred to nefarious actors which will help the fbi investigate so are often there obtaining Legal Process and investigate what foreign actors are doing and that can be part of that is shared with the providers to confront this information with. When they disinformation that we talk about in the election process or Election Administration votes or how to register or participate. That would be where it would go to and in doing that youre working with locals to encourage their voters are their citizens to participate to be able to identify trusted sources of information and the Voter Registration would be accurate and those are why are our focus has been. I have two followup questions for you and there is a social Media Outlets that are preventing the spread of this information. We sometimes have american candidates repeating this information by russia for example and well do you alert social media about that information that is coming from american candidates . Thats number one and number two. What specific steps do you take to identify the foreign efforts similar to those used in 2016 to discourage minority voters and again in 2018 . Thank you maam for the question. Ill answer the first question. The fbi cannot be the truth because its not our job and please content with false information but again, we start with the foreign aspect of what we do thats investigative interest and that the information we provide and its truly up to those providers to determine whether or not that content violate their own terms of service. Or guarding what steps we saw in 2018, its all the same activity we saw 2016 and certainly not at the same level and we talk about the success of the Internet Agency and our social Media Companies. Thank you and i yield back mister chairman. To the gentleman from georgia. Thank you mister chairman and thank you all for being here today. In february of 2019, doj and dhs have a joint statement to conclude that no evidence to date by any identified activities of a Foreign Government or agents had a Material Impact on the 2018 election. The mr. Hickey and mr. Masterson, this conclusion because of the Intelligence Community what detective threat. Correct . I think thats more or less right. It sets forth a two step process including the fbi and they gather the report and the are the reality of that impact. The Intelligence Community did not detect a threat and thats why you issue you know evidence to date. Was there any identified activities to have a Material Impact on the election. The state and local officials also did not detect a threat is, not correct . I think the i. C. E. Did gather a report of actions that had the intent and purpose of interference and you think a threat which isnt intended purpose. Its a successful threat. Thats my understanding. All right, thank you. You concluded also that they did not detect a threat. Sensors across the country regularly to tax malicious activity i or abduction infrastructure. None was detected for 2018 . Im not aware of any foreign adversary interfering or getting access to the infrastructure in 2018. Its possible that an attack or could have access and changed voter pieces without not being detected in 2018 . Isnt it possible . Yes or no . Will we have no information to suggest that it hurt. Burn off. Mr. It may move with wont use direct recording which are known as touchscreen electronic Voting Machines in 2016. President ial elections and in 2018 president ial elections. Investigating election interference in the 2016 president ial election. How many of the tens of thousands of direct recording in electronic boating is used in that election were subjected to a Forensic Audit and the federal agency . Im not aware of the fog that were performed. What about a type of testing or analysis or any direct recording that were trying to vote that were used in the 2018 elections . I would say that, as far as the election Assistance Commission goes. Are you aware of any federal agencies that have had any analysis or direct recording or electronic folding in 2018 or in 2016 elections . We havent been asked and i dont think its our role to audit election systems and its the stated certifies the accuracy. My question is if the federal government uses resources to look at or conduct a Forensic Audit with any Voting Machines or any government recording Voting Machines, in 2016 or 2018. It appears that the answer is no. Would anybody to disagree with that . Two votes to my knowledge thats correct. We have not been doubted to second guess the state. Im concerned about the 2018 election especially considering the insecurity of our Voting Machines that have come to light in the past three years. Id like to hear from the representative Response Plan should our elections these successfully hopped in 2020. What would be the federal response to a successful hiking in 2020 . The gentlemans time is expired they witness may answer the question. Thank you sir, a keep it short. Dhs stands prepared to offer a number of the same Response Services including deployment of teams to the legality earth state on the infrastructure. Well conduct analysis and work to mitigate the impacts of the possible cyber infrastructure. And edition, we have numerous analysis capabilities that we can provide to help determine if there is intrusion and thats the best way to mitigate. The fbi would work because if there was an intrusion detected but we use all our investigative rights and use the attribution to bring about criminal charges if needed. We tried to prevent an indication or we target to try to help them bury down the hatches. On a positive note, both with the 318 Million Dollars and other resources that a number of machines that are left out there is to increase substantially and over 90 of americans would be voting with some type of paper on the trail. Thank you. The time is expired, the young lady from florida. Thank you mister chairman. Thank you for coming here this morning to such an important hearing. Its been confirmed have, talked about this several times today that they sent all the made Intelligence Agency from the russia interference in the 2016 election in a sweeping and systematic passion. It was a single attempt we, heard from several rudeness is that they are actually engaging an interference currently as we speak. I want to ask this and i think that the chairman may have asked this i want to get an answer from everyone. Do you think its appropriate for a sitting president or any elected official for that matter to ask a Foreign Government to interfere in our elections . No. I dont like the word but i will say that we encourage anyone who has indications of such interference to come to the fbi and work with us and criminal violations. I would echo what my doj colleague said. As it relates to foreign efforts. No. Thank you. During the 2016 hacking. Florida, my home state was hacked and singled out by the russian government. They targeted Voter Registration systems and were able to successfully hack into at least the systems of two different counties and actually got a security briefing from the fbi and others on that issue. One of the issues that i asked during that briefing is that if they could say with certainty that actors with the data was told that they actually cannot and you cannot say with certainty that these hackers did not minute violate the data. Can you confirm that again with me please . I wasnt at the closed briefing i dont know if its classified or unclassified. What i do know, we have no indication to believe that the Material Impact on the ability to vote and the tabulation of votes. Specifically about the data thats why they answered and now we go to miss floris. Collea i was certainly not at the hearing and have no reason to doubt what was said during that time. I know there is a group now working in the local officials who secure our elections and its called the election infrastructure in government coordinated council. The council is working to improve security protocols and state Election Officials in response to thread quickly so mr. Masterson and mr. Huffman. Is florida part of that council . Yes, for that has to local representatives in that council. You just dig very briefly described. The growth any Coordination Council and 20 teen has been great and we have 24 state local members that represent a vast majority of the community and the state election directors and officials from across the country. The purpose of that group is to inform the approach to the elections so is there a view of risk its best to help them manage that and how do we go that trusted relationship so they feel safe share now with us. All move on now to a different topic here. Mr. Masterson, on may 1st 2019 director testified that the president still had not received a briefing on russian interference and the 2020 elections. Yes or no . Are you aware of dhs briefings on russian interference in the 2020 elections . Im not aware of it but that doesnt mean it didnt happen. Thats above my level. We engage regularly across the whole government on this election. Do you know if your agency has tried to meet with the president on this security . I dont know but that doesnt mean it didnt happen. Could it be important for the president to or send a threat in the 2020 elections before there agencies for Election Security . I think it work that we crossed and the work weve done to coordinate that would assume its the coordination with us. Same question miss floris and mr. Hickey. How many times as the president talked about Election Security . Thank you for the question i cant answer that specifically. That doesnt mean that it hasnt happened i just dont know personally. Same answer maam. Okay. Do you think it would be important for the agency to talk about the security of the president . Its important for the president to understand the security. Miss flores. Its important for everyone to understand National Security threat as it relates to Election Security. Thank you so much. I a young lady legals back. This concludes todays hearing, thank all of our witnesses participate saying and all members an additional written questions for the witnesses and additional materials and again we thank everyone without objection the hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] state of u. S. Israel relations. Ladies and gentlemen welcome the host, tommy ladies and gentlemen welcome the host, tommy viator and ben rhodes