National: After promising to cooperate, ex-Trump adviser Carter Page turns inquiry back on Senate panel | The Washington Post

Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser whose interactions with Russia are under FBI investigation, has repeatedly said he wants to cooperate with Congress’s Russia probes to clear his name. But in a letter this week to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Page appeared to initially duck specific questions regarding his interactions with Russian officials, suggesting that the panel seek that information from inside the U.S. government instead. In an email to The Post, Page characterized the letter as a “preliminary response” to a Senate request that he begin providing detailed information no later than May 9, leaving open the possibility he will release more information to the committee in coming days. But he titled the letter a response to “request for even more irrelevant data” and asked that the committee first release to him information the government has collected through surveillance “as a starting point.”

National: Senate Asks Trump Associates for Records of Communication With Russians | The New York Times

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked a number of high-profile Trump campaign associates to hand over emails and other records of dealings with Russians as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election and is prepared to subpoena those who refuse to cooperate, officials said. The requests for the materials were made in letters sent by the committee in the past 10 days, said two officials with knowledge of the contents of the letters. The move is designed to accelerate the committee’s investigation, and represents a new bipartisan challenge to the Trump administration, which has sought to use Republican allies in Congress to blunt the inquiries.

National: U.S. Far-Right Activists Promote Hacking Attack Against Macron | The New York Times

After months of trying to move the political needle in favor of Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, American far-right activists on Saturday threw their weight behind a hacking attack against her rival, Emmanuel Macron, hoping to cast doubt on an election that is pivotal to France and the wider world. The efforts were the culmination of an extended campaign against Mr. Macron after his candidacy began to gain steam this year, with digital activists in the United States and elsewhere sharing tactics, tips and tricks across the English- and French-speaking parts of the internet. It is unclear whether the leaked documents, which some experts say may be connected to hackers linked to Russia, will affect the outcome of the election on Sunday between Ms. Le Pen, the far-right candidate from the National Front, and Mr. Macron, an independent centrist. But the role of American far-right groups in promoting the breach online highlights their growing resolve to spread extremist messages beyond the United States.

National: FBI Director: If left unchecked, Russian hackers will change vote tallies in a future U.S. election | Cyberscoop

FBI Director James Comey predicts that if left undeterred, Russian hackers will one day attempt to change the vote tally in a U.S. election. Comey said as much during a public hearing Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Members asked Comey a series of questions concerning Russia’s ability to conduct damaging cyber-operations against both the U.S. and its allies. “In my view, [Russia is] the greatest threat of any nation on earth given their intention and capability,” Comey blankly stated. Last year, in the months preceding the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8, the Homeland Security Department discovered a series of digital attacks aimed specifically at voter registration databases used in different states.

National: Russian election hacking ‘wildly successful’ in creating discord: former U.S. lawmaker | Reuters

Russia succeeded in its goals of sowing discord in U.S. politics by meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which will likely inspire similar future efforts, two top former U.S. voices on intelligence said on Tuesday. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers agreed at a panel at Harvard University that Russia likely believed it had achieved its goals and could attempt to repeat its performance in elections in other countries. “Their purpose was to sew discontent and mistrust in our elections they wanted us to be at each others’ throat when it was over,” Rogers said at the panel at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It’s influencing, I would say, legislative process today. That’s wildly successful.”

National: Private Hearing With Intelligence Chiefs Revives House Inquiry on Russia | The New York Times

The House’s investigation into Russian meddling in the election lurched back to life on Thursday, as a closed-door hearing with James B. Comey, director of the F.B.I., and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, cleared the way for the inquiry to move forward. Representatives K. Michael Conaway of Texas, the newly minted Republican leader of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation, and Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat, said they were inviting more witnesses and requesting documents — effectively restarting the investigation that halted in recent months amid political infighting. Those witnesses will include Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general who was fired by President Trump, they said. Plans for a public hearing with Ms. Yates in March were scrapped at the last minute despite protest from committee Democrats. Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the committee’s chairman, argued that they first needed more time with Mr. Comey and Admiral Rogers.

National: Comey says he feels mildly nauseous to think news of Clinton emails might have influenced election | Associated Press

FBI Director James Comey told Congress Wednesday that revealing the reopening of the Hillary Clinton email probe just before Election Day came down to a painful, complicated choice between “really bad” and “catastrophic” options. He said he’d felt “mildly nauseous” to think he might have tipped the election outcome but in hindsight would change nothing. “I would make the same decision,” Comey declared during a lengthy hearing in which Democratic senators grilled him on the seeming inconsistency between the Clinton disclosure 11 days before the election and his silence about the bureau’s investigation into possible contacts between Russia and Trump’s campaign. Comey, offering an impassioned public defense of how he handled the election-year issues, insisted that the FBI’s actions in both investigations were consistent. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI cannot take into account how it might benefit or harm politicians. “I can’t consider for a second whose political futures will be affected and in what way,” Comey told the senators. “We have to ask ourselves what is the right thing to do and then do that thing.”

National: ‘A cloud of doubt hangs over the FBI’s objectivity’: Senate grills Comey on Clinton and Russia probes | Business Insider

The Senate Judiciary Committee grilled FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday about his handling of the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email server and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee’s chairman, used his opening statement to assert that there is still no proof that any collusion occurred between President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian officials, and that “all this speculation about collusion” is coming from the explosive but unverified Trump-Russia dossier that is “spinning wild conspiracy theories.”

National: James Comey defends Clinton email decision but warns of threat from Russia | The Guardian

FBI director James Comey on Wednesday described Russia as “the greatest threat” to US democracy, but defended his decision to keep secret an investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to Moscow despite revealing details of an inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified emails. Giving evidence to a hearing of the Senate judiciary committee, Comey offered his most extensive explanation to date of the thinking behind his different approaches to the two investigations. Clinton claimed on Tuesday that Comey’s 28 October letter to leading members of Congress about new emails that had been found damaged voter perceptions of her and cost her the election. “If the election had been on 27 October, I would be your president,” the former Democratic presidential candidate said. The discovery of the emails ultimately made no difference to the FBI decision not to press charges over the use of the private server.

National: How cybersleuths decided Russia was behind US election hack | CNET

It was a bombshell. Operatives from two Russian spy agencies had infiltrated computers of the Democratic National Committee, months before the US national election. One agency — nicknamed Cozy Bear by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike — used a tool that was “ingenious in its simplicity and power” to insert malicious code into the DNC’s computers, CrowdStrike’s Chief Technology Officer Dmitri Alperovitch wrote in a June blog post. The other group, nicknamed Fancy Bear, remotely grabbed control of the DNC’s computers. By October, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security agreed that Russia was behind the DNC hack. On Dec. 29, those agencies, together with the FBI, issued a joint statement reaffirming that conclusion. And a week later, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence summarized its findings (PDF) in a declassified (read: scrubbed) report. Even President Donald Trump acknowledged, “It was Russia,” a few days later — although he told “Face the Nation” earlier this week it “could’ve been China.”

National: Full Public FBI Reveal Is Rare for Trump-Russia Type Probes | Associated Press

Don’t expect FBI Director James Comey to reveal much about the bureau’s months-long investigation of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia when he speaks publicly before members of Congress on Wednesday. In fact, there’s no guarantee Comey and his agency will ever fully lay bare those findings for the American public, because such investigations rarely end in criminal charges that offer a full picture. Some measure of information will certainly come to light through multiple congressional investigations. And political pressure will fall on Comey and the Justice Department to make public what investigators have learned.

National: How easy would it be to rig the next election? | ThinkProgress

On May 25, 2014, Russian state broadcaster Channel One reported the winner of the day’s presidential election in Ukraine: with a surprising 37 percent plurality, Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the extreme-right paramilitary group Right Sector, would be the new Ukrainian president. According to Channel One, previous favorite Petro Poroshenko received only 29 percent of the vote. These numbers were particularly unexpected because only 0.7 percent of voters had voted for Yarosh, versus the 54.7 percent who had voted for Poroshenko — numbers that news outlets in Ukraine and elsewhere were accurately reporting. Barely a half-hour prior to the announcement of the election results, a cybersecurity team at Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) removed a virus that had been deployed in its computers. That virus was designed to total 37 percent of votes for Yarosh, and 29 percent for Poroshenko.

National: New chief named for Justice Department unit probing Trump-Russia ties | Politico

A veteran federal prosecutor from Northern Virginia has been tapped to temporarily oversee the Justice Department division handling the ongoing probe into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. Dana Boente’s new assignment as Justice’s acting attorney general for national security comes fast on the heels of his most recent high-profile task: serving as the acting deputy attorney general. Rod Rosenstein was sworn in as Justice’s No. 2 official on Wednesday, freeing Boente of those responsibilities. Boente had also unexpectedly became the acting attorney general for a time earlier this year after the holdover Obama appointee was fired by President Donald Trump.

National: UK was given details of alleged contacts between Trump campaign and Moscow | The Guardian

The UK government was given details last December of allegedly extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow, according to court papers. Reports by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer, on possible collusion between the the Trump camp and the Kremlin are at the centre of a political storm in the US over Moscow’s role in getting Donald Trump elected. It was not previously known that the UK intelligence services had also received the dossier but Steele confirmed in a court filing earlier this month that he handed a memorandum compiled in December to a “senior UK government national security official acting in his official capacity, on a confidential basis in hard copy form”.

National: House Intelligence Committee reportedly agrees on witness list for Russia probe | Business Insider

The House Intelligence Committee has agreed on a witness list of between 36 and 48 people for its investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, CNN reported Wednesday night. Included on the list are current and former associates of President Donald Trump believed to have been in contact with Russian officials during the campaign or transition period. According to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the list includes Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser; Roger Stone, a Trump confidant; Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser; and Carter Page, an early Trump campaign adviser. … The full committee has also now gained access to the classified intelligence documents Nunes said he obtained from a source on White House grounds last month, according to CNN. Nunes sparked bipartisan outcry and came under intense scrutiny when he briefed Trump on the documents directly without first sharing them with Schiff.

National: Holder: Trump’s election fraud claims are laying foundation for voter suppression | The Hill

Former Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday tore into President Trump’s claims of rampant voter fraud, saying the allegations have laid a foundation for voter suppression and more restrictive voter identification laws. “The vote fraud mantra is said so often — it’s almost said robotically — that some people have unthinkingly begun to believe that the issue is real,” Holder said at a National Action Network conference in New York City. “And with recent claims by Mr. Trump of ‘rigged elections’ based on fraud, again without any proof, save the bluster of the candidate, this mistaken belief in voter fraud becomes almost hardwired,” he continued.

National: Senator fears Russian election interference could be ‘normalized’ | The Hill

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said Thursday that Russian meddling in U.S. elections could become “normalized” if the government does not further respond to Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential contest. Shaheen doubled down on her push for an independent investigation of Russia’s actions and more sanctions on Moscow in a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Thursday afternoon. “If Russia gets a pass on 2016, it could interfere in future U.S. elections not only at the presidential level but at the House and Senate level,” Shaheen said.

National: Facebook found efforts to sway presidential election, elect Trump | CNBC

Facebook says some groups tried to use its platform to sway the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. In a case study of the 2016 presidential election, the company said it found several instances of “information operations,” its term for governments and organizations who attempt to sway political opinion by spreading fake news and other nefarious tactics. The case study was included in Facebook’s white paper on “information operations.” It also detailed ways it was combating “fake news” and other misinformation spread by adding new technologies and creating more security features.

National: Russia’s Interference in the U.S. Election Was Just the Beginning | The Atlantic

Mike Conaway, the Republican who replaced Devin Nunes as head of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, has described his mission simply: “I just want to find out what happened,” he’s said. The more urgent question elsewhere in the world, however, isn’t confined to the past. It concerns what is happening—not just in the United States but in European democracies as well. In the Netherlands, Dutch authorities counted paper ballots in a recent election by hand to prevent foreign governments—and Russia in particular—from manipulating the results through cyberattacks. In Denmark, the defense minister has accused the Russian government of carrying out a two-year campaign to infiltrate email accounts at his ministry. In the United Kingdom, a parliamentary committee reports that it cannot “rule out” the possibility that “foreign interference” caused a voter-registration site to crash ahead of Britain’s referendum on EU membership. And in France, a cybersecurity firm has just discovered that suspected Russian hackers are targeting the leading presidential candidate. “We are increasingly concerned about cyber-enabled interference in democratic political processes,” representatives from the Group of Seven—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S.—declared after meeting in Italy earlier this month. Russia, a member of the group until it was kicked out for annexing Crimea, wasn’t mentioned in the statement. It didn’t need to be. The subtext was clear.

National: Russian hackers heavily targeted news outlet in days before U.S. election, researchers say | Cyberscoop

Hackers working for the Russian government sent a barrage of targeted phishing emails between 2014 and 2016 to employees of major news outlets, and they focused particularly on Al Jazeera in the days before and shortly following the U.S. presidential election, according to new research by cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. It’s unclear exactly why the elite team of hackers — known as APT-28, Fancy Bear or Pawn Storm — focused so heavily on the Qatar-based, state-funded global broadcaster during that short window. Like other news agencies targeted over the longer two-year span, including the New York Times and Buzzfeed, the award-winning outlet covered the election in detail and dedicated a section of its website to election-night coverage.

National: House Russia investigators optimistic under Conaway’s leadership | Politico

Rep. Mike Conaway, the House’s new top Russia investigator, is telling lawmakers on the Intelligence Committee that they should expect to be in Washington more than usual as the beleaguered probe gets a reboot, panel members said after a closed-door meeting Wednesday. Committee Democrats welcomed Conaway’s remarks, describing the Texas Republican as a “straight-shooter” who was committed to a thorough, bipartisan investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election, including the possibility of collusion with the Trump campaign.

National: Yates, Clapper To Testify In Open House Hearing On Russian Election Meddling | NPR

Two Obama administration officials will testify in an open hearing before the House Intelligence Committee as part of ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia attempted to help Donald Trump win the election. Investigations by the House, Senate and FBI are examining what exactly Russia did and whether the Trump campaign was involved, among other questions. Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are scheduled to appear before the House committee on May 8. It’s a long-delayed hearing. Yates and Clapper, along with former CIA Director John Brennan, were originally scheduled to testify in late March, but those plans were scuttled amid a simmering soap opera of distrust and missteps within the House committee.

National: Senate gives limited resources to Russia election-meddling probe | Reuters

The Senate’s main investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is equipped with a much smaller staff than previous high-profile intelligence and scandal probes in Congress, which could potentially affect its progress, according to sources and a Reuters review of public records. With only seven staff members initially assigned to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-month-old investigation, progress has been sluggish and minimal, said two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity. A committee aide, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said two more staff members were being added and a few others were involved less formally.

National: Senate Russia investigation to add 2 more staffers after pace criticized | CNN

The Senate Intelligence Committee is hiring two new staffers for its investigation into Russian interference in the US election, the top Democrat on the Senate Russia investigation told CNN on Monday. The additional staffers — including one Republican and one Democrat, versed in the National Security Agency collection tactics — come as some sources on the committee have grumbled behind the scenes about the pace of the investigation. Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said investigators obtained a large batch of documents they requested just before Congress went on break and have completed 27 interviews as part of their investigation.

National: A scholar asks, ‘Can democracy survive the Internet?’ | The Washington Post

In more innocent times, the rise of the Internet was seen by many people as a boon to democracy. Disruptive, yes, but the Web broadened the flow of information, introduced new voices into the political debates, empowered citizens and even provided a powerful fundraising tool for some lesser-known candidates such as Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders. Now, in what are clearly less innocent times, the Internet is viewed as a far less benign force. It can be a haven for spreading fake news and rewarding the harshest and most divisive of political rhetoric. It is a medium, for all its benefits, that has dark corners populated by anonymous actors (some not even real people) whose influence appears to be growing but not easily measured.

National: Comey Tried to Shield the F.B.I. From Politics. Then He Shaped an Election. | The New York Times

The day before he upended the 2016 election, James B. Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, summoned agents and lawyers to his conference room. They had been debating all day, and it was time for a decision. Mr. Comey’s plan was to tell Congress that the F.B.I. had received new evidence and was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton, the presidential front-runner. The move would violate the policies of an agency that does not reveal its investigations or do anything that may influence an election. But Mr. Comey had declared the case closed, and he believed he was obligated to tell Congress that had changed. “Should you consider what you’re about to do may help elect Donald Trump president?” an adviser asked him, Mr. Comey recalled recently at a closed meeting with F.B.I. agents. He could not let politics affect his decision, he replied. “If we ever start considering who might be affected, and in what way, by what we do, we’re done,” he told the agents.

National: Trump was going to investigate voter fraud. What happened? | CNN

The White House does not have any immediate timeline for President Donald Trump’s voter fraud investigation and the commission he was adamant about creating during his first few weeks in office, even as the administration approaches the end of its 100 days. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told CNN that he expects something on the commission within the “next week or two, but I don’t want to get ahead of that.” Spicer said there would not be an executive order (as the President originally wanted) and in lieu of that there would be a commission headed up by Vice President Mike Pence. Spicer did say that the vice president will still be “very involved” in the investigation.

National: Senate Trump-Russia Probe Has No Full-Time Staff, No Key Witnesses | The Daily Beast

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russia’s election interference is supposedly the best hope for getting the public credible answers about whether there was any coordination between the Kremlin and Trump Tower. But there are serious reasons to doubt that it can accomplish this task, as currently configured. More than three months after the committee announced that it had agreed on the scope of the investigation, the panel has not begun substantially investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, three individuals with ties to the committee told The Daily Beast. The investigation does not have a single staffer dedicated to it full-time, and those staff members working on it part-time do not have significant investigative experience. The probe currently appears to be moving at a pace slower than prior Senate Intelligence Committee investigations, such as the CIA torture inquiry, which took years to accomplish.

National: House panel’s Russia hearing with Obama officials is back on | Los Angeles Times

A previously canceled House Intelligence Committee hearing to receive testimony from three former top Obama administration officials about Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election is back on for next month. The panel said Friday it had invited Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general fired by President Trump, former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, to testify sometime after May 2 in an open hearing after their original testimony was abruptly canceled in March by Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare). The announcement indicates that the panel’s Russia investigation, which was thrown into turmoil last month after Nunes stepped aside as head of the probe following allegations he may have improperly disclosed classified information, is getting back on track.

National: Putin-linked think tank drew up plan to sway 2016 U.S. election – documents | Reuters

A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters. They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election. The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin’s office. The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals. It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said. A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said.