National: Trump and His Allies Stumble As Russia Probe Moves Closer to the White House | Time

Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy was just trying to help. But as they have for weeks, attempts to defend President Trump against the accelerating investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia just seem to make things worse. At a May 23 House Intelligence Committee hearing into the Russian operation against the 2016 presidential election, Gowdy asked former CIA chief John Brennan, who stepped down on Jan. 20, whether he had seen any “evidence of collusion, coordination [or] conspiracy between Donald Trump and Russian state actors.” If Gowdy thought Brennan was going to distance the President from the spreading scandal, his move backfired. “I saw information and intelligence that was worthy of investigation by the [FBI] to determine whether or not such cooperation or [collusion] was taking place,” Brennan said. When pressed by the retreating Gowdy on whether he meant Trump in particular, Brennan said he wasn’t referring to “any individuals” but wouldn’t rule Trump out, either. The damage was done.

National: Trump lawyer in Russia probes has Russian ties of his own | CNN

The prominent New York lawyer expected to represent President Donald Trump in the widening Russia probes has professional connections of his own to Moscow, which could create yet another public-relations problem for the White House. Marc Kasowitz, who has been Trump’s go-to lawyer for years on both personal and business matters, is defending a Russian bank, OJSC Sberbank, in an ongoing lawsuit in US court. He also represents a company controlled by a Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, who has close ties to the Kremlin. Kasowitz’ clients with Russian ties may not pose any legal conflicts of interests as he prepares to help Trump navigate an investigation that the president calls “a witch hunt.” But the optics of the situation — a lawyer with Russian-linked clients representing a president, whose campaign is being investigated for alleged collusion with Russia — could make a messy situation for Trump even messier.

National: Political Gerrymandering: Is There a Math Test for That? | Roll Call

Racial gerrymanders have been undone many times, most recently when the Supreme Court ruled against a pair of North Carolina congressional districts this week. But another case from that same state, heading into federal court next month, has a shot at eventually persuading the justices to do what they’ve never done before: strike down an election map as an unconstitutionally partisan gerrymander. The high court ruled three decades ago that it may be unconstitutional to draw political boundaries so that one party was sure to win a disproportionate number of elections, but it’s never come up with a means for deciding when such mapmaking has become too extreme. The new lawsuit involving North Carolina congressional districts stands to provide just such a rationale. That’s especially true if it ends up getting paired with a similar case involving Wisconsin’s state legislature districts, which the Supreme Court seems virtually certain to consider in its term beginning this fall.

National: Democrats focus on voting rights to fight Trump’s voter fraud commission | USA Today

The Democratic National Committee is launching a new voting commission to combat a recently announced Trump administration effort — to investigate voter fraud — which Democrats fear will lead to voter suppression in poor and minority communities. The commission will document and report on “voter suppression tactics” and make recommendations for strengthening access to the polls for all Americans, according to a statement provided to USA TODAY. It is part of a broader restructuring by the committee’s new leadership that prioritizes voting rights after a number of U.S. states imposed new restrictions for the first time in 2016, including the swing states of Wisconsin and Virginia.

National: Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer | The New York Times

American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence. The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael T. Flynn, a retired general who was advising Mr. Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia. Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Mr. Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Mr. Manafort.

National: Ex-CIA chief: Trump staff had enough contact with Russia to justify FBI inquiry | The Guardian

The former CIA director, John Brennan, has said there were enough contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Moscow by last summer to justify further investigation by the FBI. In testimony to the House intelligence committee, Brennan gave the fullest account to date of the scale of the effort to combat Russian operations to affect the outcome of the 2016 elections. He confirmed that the CIA had set up a special group with the NSA and FBI in late July to investigate the extent of Russian intervention in the presidential election. He briefed congressional leaders on the threat and on 4 August he warned Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Russian intelligence agency, FSB, in a telephone call to stop the meddling, telling him it would backfire. Bortnikov told Brennan he would pass on the message to Vladmir Putin.

National: Richard Clarke: Why the journalists, spies, and politicians warned about Trump’s Russia ties couldn’t believe their eyes | Quartz

As the US Congress, the FBI, and newly appointed special counsel Robert Mueller probe the nest of activities around Russian interference in US politics, a lot of people are asking the same question: Why didn’t we know about all of this before the presidential election? If it turns out that there was a major Russian role in the outcome of the election, much of the US media, some members of Congress, and even leaders in the Obama White House may have to admit that they had fair warning. As with so many other disasters, from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to Hurricane Katrina and the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns, a lot of powerful people ignored an expert who very clearly told us what was coming.

National: Why Trump Can’t Stop the Russia Investigation | Time

In May 2016, a Russian military intelligence officer talked too much. Boasting to a colleague, he said that his organization, known as the GRU, was getting ready to cause chaos in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The officer was “bragging about the systematic attempt… to cause chaos into our electoral cycle,” a senior U.S. intelligence official told TIME for the magazine’s current cover story on the Russian operation. What the officer didn’t know was that U.S. spies were listening. Looking back as part of their effort to uncover the details of the 2016 Russia operation, U.S. investigators now realize the GRU officer’s boast was the first indication they had from their sources that Russia wasn’t just hacking U.S. email accounts to collect intelligence, but was actually planning to interfere in the vote, several senior intelligence officials told TIME.

National: Ex-CIA Chief: Worries Grew of Trump Campaign Contacts to Russia | Reuters

Former CIA director John Brennan said on Tuesday he had noticed contacts between associates of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia during the 2016 election and grew concerned Moscow had sought to lure Americans down “a treasonous path.” Brennan, who headed the agency until Trump became president in January, also told a congressional hearing that he personally warned the head of Russia’s FSB security service in a phone call last August that meddling in the election would hurt relations with the United States.

National: Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence | The Washington Post

President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials. Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election. Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.

National: Republican redistricting is taking a beating in the courts (again) | The Washington Post

This year, federal courts have been litigating a steady stream of gerrymandering claims. And most of the electoral maps the courts have knocked down were drawn by Republicans. That’s good news for Democrats: They have an opportunity in several states to draw more favorable congressional and state legislative maps ahead of 2018 elections. And every seat counts, given the 2020 Census is right around the corner, which brings with it the opportunity in many states to draw new district maps. Some Republican legislatures are paying the price for capturing 21 chambers in the 2010 elections, the last time electoral maps were being drawn. Monday, North Carolina became the third GOP-controlled state legislature in a row to get its map-drawing skills declared illegal by the Supreme Court.

National: Trump-Russia investiigation: Coverup is now part of it | McClatchy

Investigators into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential elections are now authorized to probe whether White House officials have engaged in a cover-up, according to members of Congress who were briefed Friday by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. A Justice Department official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic, confirmed that Rosenstein told members of the House of Representatives that the special counsel in charge of the probe, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, “has been given the authority to investigate the possibility of a cover-up.”

National: Senators told of broadening Russia investigation | The Hill

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein dropped two bombshells during a hotly anticipated appearance before the Senate on Thursday, less than 24 hours after he announced the appointment of a special counsel in the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election. According to lawmakers, Rosenstein confirmed that the bureau’s investigation is no longer strictly a counterintelligence investigation — a kind of probe that does not normally result in charges — but also a criminal one.

National: Former FBI chief Mueller appointed to probe Trump-Russia ties | Reuters

The U.S. Justice Department, in the face of rising pressure from Capitol Hill, named former FBI chief Robert Mueller on Wednesday as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow. The move followed a week in which the White House was thrown into uproar after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Democrats and some of the president’s fellow Republicans had demanded an independent probe of whether Russia tried to sway the outcome of November’s election in favor of Trump and against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

National: For Voting Rights Advocates, Court Decision Is ‘Temporary Victory’ | The New York Times

It seemed like an important victory for voting rights advocates on Monday when the Supreme Court declined to reconsider an appellate decision striking down North Carolina’s restrictive voting law. But those who follow the arcana of election law have another view — that the justices have merely postponed a showdown over what kind of voting rules are acceptable and how much influence partisanship should have over access to the ballot box. And in that struggle, it is by no means certain who will prevail. A parade of voting rights cases is headed for likely review by the Supreme Court — including challenges to gerrymanders in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Texas and a ruling against another restrictive voter law in Texas. At the same time, states controlled by Republican legislatures and governors are continuing to enact stringent election laws, many of them similar to the ones already moving through the courts.

National: Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians: sources | Reuters

Michael Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the exchanges told Reuters. The previously undisclosed interactions form part of the record now being reviewed by FBI and congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election and contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Six of the previously undisclosed contacts described to Reuters were phone calls between Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and Trump advisers, including Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, three current and former officials said.

National: How Trump’s new ‘election integrity’ appointee has unleashed chaos on elections in the South | Facing South

President Trump signed an executive order last week creating the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to promote “fair and honest Federal elections,” following up on his unproven claims that he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton because of widespread voter fraud. The commission will be chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, and its vice chair will be Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, also a Republican. Kobach’s appointment has alarmed voting rights advocates, who point to his record of making unsubstantiated claims about the extent of voter fraud — which study after study has found to be negligible — and using them to promote strict voter ID laws and other policies that make it harder to vote.

National: 3 Things Election Tech Officials Need Right Now | Government Technology

The U.S. is in the midst of a historic moment of civic participation. And while protesters march in the streets and politicians wrangle with each other over the aftermath of an election, the people who actually run elections are quietly working on making their systems better. And those systems are, by all accounts, in need of updating. At the first-ever Global Election Technology Summit on May 17 in San Francisco, hosted by the Startup Policy Lab, a diverse group of people involved in elections and the technology used to run them gathered to talk about how they can improve the process for everyone involved. Here are three things they said the government could use right now to make elections better.

National: ACLU files Right-to-Know request with Secretary of State over election commission | New Hampshire Union Leader

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire has filed a Right-to-Know request with Secretary of State Bill Gardner, seeking information about his participation in the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The commission is headed up by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The Right-to-Know request in New Hampshire is part of a national campaign targeting commission members who currently serve as secretaries of state.

National: GOP blocks House vote on independent Russia-Trump investigation | USA Today

House Republicans blocked a vote Wednesday on legislation to create an independent commission to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. A Democratic effort to force a vote failed, with only one Republican – Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina – joining them in a procedural vote that would have allowed them to bring up the bill. But Democrats also launched a petition Wednesday that would allow them to force a vote on the bill at a later date if they get a majority of lawmakers to sign on. “Today is a courage call for our Republican colleagues,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell of Calif., who co-authored the bill with Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland. “Can they — as we have done with past attacks against our country — can they put party aside, put our country first and unite with Democrats to say that never again will we tolerate an attack like this?”

National: Transforming Election Cybersecurity | Council on Foreign Relations

The 2016 U.S. election constituted a watershed for democracies in the digital age. During the election cycle, fears proliferated among policymakers and the public that foreign actors could exploit cyber technologies [PDF] to tamper with voter registration, access voting machines, manipulate storage and transmission of results, and influence election outcomes. Russian information operations and disinformation on social media compounded these fears about election cybersecurity by raising questions about foreign interference with the election’s integrity. Similar worries have arisen with elections this year in France, Britain, and Germany, and the Netherlands opted to hand count ballots in its March election to prevent hacking from affecting the outcome. In May 3 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, James B. Comey, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, indicated that Russia had tried to tamper with vote counts in other countries and that it might attempt to do the same in the United States in the future. Technical strategies [PDF] to protect election systems from cyber interference exist, such as stopping the use of voting machines connected by wireless networks and deploying machines that produce auditable paper trails. However, the events of 2016 demonstrate that more high-level political action is required to manage real and perceived cyber vulnerabilities in election systems.

National: How big of a threat is Trump’s voter fraud commission? | Slate

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to step in and potentially overturn a lower court ruling that North Carolina’s restrictive voter-identification law is unconstitutional, specifically for how it targets black Americans. While this decision counts as a win for voting rights, it comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will lead President Trump’s new Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity. Trump, of course, claims that millions of people voted illegally in the last election; Kobach supports that claim.

National: Hacking US Voting Machines Is Child’s Play | CleanTechnica

Thanks to the embarrassing incompetence of Humpty Trumpty and his virulent assault on America’s political institutions, many people are already looking forward to the 2018 elections as a way of throwing the Trump supporters out of Congress and putting America back on the path of being a true world leader and not a pale imitation of a banana republic. Much of the public anger focuses on deep cuts to programs like the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Social Security, but others are equally motivated by Trump’s obdurate ignorance about climate change. … J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, and Ph.D. student Matt Bernhard have assembled a number of reasons that they say render US voting machines susceptible to outside interference that could affect the accuracy of their tallies. In 2002, after the chaotic presidential election two years before, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. The legislation provided funding for several private electronic voting machine manufacturers, including Diebold.

National: Supreme Court order unlikely to deter voting restrictions | Associated Press

The Supreme Court’s refusal to breathe new life into North Carolina’s sweeping voter identification law might be just a temporary victory for civil rights groups. Republican-led states are continuing to enact new voter ID measures and other voting restrictions, and the Supreme Court’s newly reconstituted conservative majority, with the addition of Justice Neil Gorsuch, could make the court less likely to invalidate the laws based on claims under the federal Voting Rights Act or the Constitution. The justices on Monday left in place last summer’s ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the law’s photo ID requirement to vote in person and other provisions, which the lower court said targeted African-Americans “with almost surgical precision.”

National: U.S. Cyber Command: Russia hacking “the new normal” | Defense Systems

Admiral Michael S. Rogers, head of U.S. Cyber Command, called Russia’s cyber operations “destabilizing.” During recent exchanges on Capitol Hill, Rogers appeared to be in agreement with the U.S. intelligence community that Russia’s election interference is likely to be a new normal. Russian President Vladimir Putin “figured that he was no military match for the United States, but he could launch a Manhattan Project for cyber attacks,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., declared last month at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform information technology subcommittee. It is still an open question how the United States will fight back, whether it’s Russia or other foreign hacking onslaught. U.S. officials and experts warn that it is time for fresh thinking on how to combat these threats, both in government agencies and in the cybersecurity industry.

National: Experts say Trump’s voter fraud commission is a solution in need of a problem | Sinclair Broadcast Group

On Thursday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to create a new commission to investigate his claims of widespread voter fraud, reigniting the storm of skepticism that has surrounded his past allegations of election interference and rigging. … Fact-checkers, state election authorities and lawmakers from both political parties have largely dismissed Trump’s claims that of election fraud since November 8. Immediately after the announcement of the new commission, some suggested that the administration will be using taxpayer resources to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist. Other critics suspect even more nefarious motives, suggesting that the panel’s leadership and its mission may actually be an effort to justify stricter voting laws that could suppress the vote.

National: Intelligence Officials Warn of Continued Russia Cyberthreats | The New York Times

On the same day that President Trump went on Twitter to renew his claim that the focus on Russian hacking was “a Democrat EXCUSE for losing the election,” his two top intelligence officials told the Senate on Thursday that Russian cyberactivities were the foremost threat facing the United States and were likely to grow only more severe. The officials delivered the warning as the nation’s intelligence agencies released their annual worldwide threat assessment, which described the Kremlin’s “aggressive cyberposture,” evidenced by “Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. election.” Dan Coats, Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, repeated and endorsed, almost word for word, the Obama administration’s conclusion that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized the 2016 U.S. election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets.”

National: Russian Election Meddling ‘Well Documented,’ Tillerson Says | Bloomberg

Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election has been “well documented,” but it’s still in the interests of the U.S. to attempt to improve relations with Moscow, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. “I don’t think there’s any question that the Russians were playing around in our electoral processes,” Tillerson said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Chuck Todd” on Sunday. He added that the impact of that meddling was “inconclusive.” Even so, “it’s in the interest of the American people, it’s in the interest of Russia, the rest of the world, that we do something to see if we cannot improve the relationship between the two greatest nuclear powers in the world,” Tillerson said.

National: Richard Burr Leads Russia Inquiry, Whether He Likes It or Not | The New York Times

The premonition came in a Winston-Salem conference room, on an otherwise happy election night in 2004, before Richard M. Burr of North Carolina had even declared victory in his bid to join the Senate. News outlets had begun calling the race. A watch party was waiting for him. But his mind was elsewhere, at least for a moment. “He said, ‘I hope they don’t put me on the Intelligence Committee,’” recalled Paul Shumaker, a top strategist for Mr. Burr who sat with him to follow the returns. “‘It’s hard enough to sleep at night the way it is.’” Mr. Burr’s present sleep habits are unknown, particularly as he tiptoes at last toward criticism of a president he had generally praised — until the firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director. This much is less ambiguous: Now the committee’s chairman as it investigates ties between President Trump’s associates and Russia, the unobtrusive Mr. Burr is shrugging into a spotlight he never expected and does not especially seem to relish.