Page 515 - Selection Process News Today

I thought it was interesting that jay johnson made the point that he made two efforts to try to help out and protect security and was rebuffed both times. first by the dnc. he said he offered home lald securitys assistance to the dnc when he learned of the hack and the dnc didnt accept the help. at that point, the fbi was investigating. and then when he has this conference call with state election officials on august 15th of last year, he wants to get their support for designating state voting s...

>> the hoax is about the fact that theyre trying to delegitimize his win in the election process and less about the hack itself. i think he said several times now that he believes that russia was part of it. he also -- some of the same members have said that they dont think it influenced the election. thats what a lot of this process is about, its about trying to make excuses for why democrats lost. >> as we heard last night, the president is more than happy to tell anyone and everyone why he th...

In some way. and so we were concerned that by making the statement, we might in and of itself be, uh, challenging the integrity of the election process. >> reporter: in the senate hearing, one member asked if donald trump was unwittingly acting as a russian agent by calling the election rigged. another asked if hillary clinton was by, as he put it, blaming her loss on things like hacking and fake news. >> michelle joins us now. as you mentioned before, we may finally at last perhaps get more inf...

Protections, and he gets this blowback, pushback from the state election officials. they dont want it. they fear a federal takeover of the election process. and he put the idea on a back burner. so as a result, two efforts about at this secretary of homeland security are both rebuffed during this russian cyber attack. >> and one of the takeaways from the hearing, not just johnsons testimony but other witnesses, these are systems very distributed. theyre different vendors. different localities an...

When loretta lynch canceled jim comeys plan to write an op-ed about this way back in august, you know, i think that the american people was left with a confidence that was simply poorly grounded and may in the end have affected the election results. so i think, you know, obviously we need an investigation to look at what trump did, but i think its also only fair to look at the mistakes on our side. >> josh, do you want to respond to that? because at the time, people were looking at the wikileaks...

Challenging the integrity of the election process. >> in another hearing, those currently at the top level in homeland security revealed that russian hackers potentially targeted the election systems of 21 states. lets talk about all of this. i have cnn national security analyst steve hall, retired cia chief of russia operations. steve hall, you heard jay johnsons defense there on why it took so long. what did you make of that? >> i sort of take him at his word on that, brooke. this was a politi...

Ranking democrat on the committee, adam schiff, and why it took president trump so long to comment. >> why did we wait from july to october for making that statement? >> there was an election and many would criticize us, perhaps, for taking sides in the election. so that had to be carefully considered. one of the candidates, as youll recall, was predicting the election was going to be rigged in some way. we were concerned that by making the statement, we might, of and of itself, be challenging t...

Campaign. or taking steps to themselves delegitimize the election process and undermine the integrity of the election process. so we considered all those things. the decision was made that the director of national intelligence, secretary of homeland security should together make this statement. there were public statements made by various administration officials, including myself, all through the campaign season, pre-election, to the same affect. >> i yield back. >> secretary johnson, welcome. ...

In and of itself, be challenging the integrity of the election process. >> reporter: there are also more questions now surrounding fired national security adviser michael flynn, the "new york times" reporting that even though senior intelligence officials believed by january that flynn was vulnerable to russian blackmail, he was still present every day for weeks in the presidents top secret intelligence briefing. today a top house democrat, elijah cummings, writing to the presidents chief of sta...

Departments offer for help. this all came after secretary sean spicer admitted this week that hes not sure president trump even believes the russians interfered with the election, even though the u.s. intelligence committee asserts that they did. heres cnns michelle kozinski. >> reporter: robert mueller on the hill today to attack obstruction of justice by the president. to both the house and senate intelligence committees today, russian cybermeddling front and center. >> in 2016, the russian go...