National: Classified docs contradict Nunes surveillance claims, GOP and Dem sources say | CNN

After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN. Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump’s allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the “unmasking” of US individuals’ identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a “massive story.” However, over the last week, several members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees have reviewed intelligence reports related to those requests at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

National: U.S. Crackdown on Russian Hackers Ensnares Notorious Spammer | Bloomberg

U.S. efforts to disrupt Russian hacking rings took another step as a 10-year pursuit of a Russian man whom U.S. prosecutors called one of the world’s most notorious email spammers ended with his arrest in Spain last week. Peter Levashov, of St. Petersburg, Russia, hacked into email and bank accounts of thousands of Americans, federal prosecutors said Monday in a statement. They said he also operated under the name Peter Severa, who is among the top 10 of the world’s worst spammers, according to a list maintained by the antispam organization Spamhaus. The arrest is part of a crackdown on Russian hackers accused of targeting everything from financial institutions to the U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russia orchestrated computer attacks to meddle with the election last fall, including a break-in to systems operated by the Democratic National Committee. That investigation is underway, and no charges have been filed.

National: Russian computer programmer arrested in Spain reportedly over US election hacking | The New York Times

He refused to meet business associates in person and never talked on the phone, preferring instead to communicate via encrypted messaging services. But the elaborate precautions taken by the Russian computer spam kingpin known as Peter Severa appear to have failed him. Acting on an F.B.I. request, the police in Spain arrested a man this weekend named Peter Levashov, according to Russian news media reports and Reuters, citing a Russian Embassy spokesman in Madrid. Western cybersecurity researchers have identified Mr. Levashov as Peter Severa, though some doubt he is the same person. The initial reports in Russian news media of Mr. Levashov’s arrest did not say if he was suspected by United States intelligence agencies of being involved in attempts by Russian government hackers to meddle in the 2016 American presidential election. The American intelligence agencies have said Russian hackers broke into the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the email of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and released documents in an effort to sway the election toward Donald J. Trump.

National: Questions, concerns continue to swirl around election security | GCN

At an April 4 Election Assistance Commission public hearing, a senior Department of Homeland Security official sought to stress one thing: The designation of election systems as critical infrastructure doesn’t cut into states’ autonomy. Concerns over DHS control have simmered since then-Secretary Jeh Johnson first suggested the critical infrastructure designation last summer. Yet Neil Jenkins, DHS’ director of the Enterprise Performance Management Office, said at the EAC hearing that his agency sees the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) Election Cybersecurity Task Force as the main point of contact for deciding when DHS system-scanning tools are needed. Jenkins also said he sees the EAC as a critical point of contact for local officials who may be interested in utilizing DHS scanning and security products.

National: Devin Nunes steps aside from House intelligence committee’s Russia inquiry | The Guardian

Devin Nunes, Donald Trump’s chief ally on the congressional committees investigating the president’s connections to Russia, has stepped aside from the inquiry, as he faces his own ethics investigation. Less than two weeks after the Democrats on the House intelligence committee called for Nunes to recuse himself, the committee chairman said he would “temporarily” leave the inquiry in the hands of other rightwing Republicans, leaving it unclear how much Nunes’ absence would transform an investigation stalled by deep partisan infighting. Nunes, a member of Trump’s national security transition team and the head of the House intelligence committee, is now the subject of an inquiry from the House ethics panel. … Nunes’ decision makes him the second Trump ally to remove himself from the varied Russia investigations. The first, attorney general Jeff Sessions, stepped aside on 3 March after revelations that he had meetings with the Russian ambassador while part of the Trump campaign.

National: Clinton: ‘Deeply concerned’ about Russian election role | Associated Press

Hillary Clinton said she is “deeply concerned” about allegations of Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election and says there needs to be an independent, nonpartisan investigation to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Speaking Thursday in New York at a summit on women’s issues, Clinton said Russian involvement was meant to sow “distrust and confusion. I think what was done to us was an act of aggression and it was carried out by a foreign power under the control of someone who has a deep desire to dominate Europe and send us into a tailspin,” she said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Clinton called on Congress to put party squabbles aside and look into it. Otherwise, she said, “They will be back.”

National: C.I.A. Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed | The New York Times

The C.I.A. told senior lawmakers in classified briefings last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump’s victory months later, former government officials say. The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C.I.A. and counterparts at the F.B.I., where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed primarily at disrupting America’s political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected, according to interviews. The former officials said that in late August — 10 weeks before the election — John O. Brennan, then the C.I.A. director, was so concerned about increasing evidence of Russia’s election meddling that he began a series of urgent, individual briefings for eight top members of Congress, some of them on secure phone lines while they were on their summer break.

National: The Coming Voting Rights Battle: Access vs. Accountability | WhoWhatWhy

For many years, the voting integrity community has grappled with the question of how to accommodate voters with disabilities without making elections less secure. There might finally be a solution on the horizon. One-sixth of the American electorate — over 35 million eligible voters — is disabled. For many of them, simple tasks that many of us take for granted — say, putting pen to paper — is, at best, terribly inconvenient, and, at worst, impossible. This is why the disabled prefer direct-recording electronic voting machines (DREs), which advertise handicap-friendly features like touchscreens and audio-enabled ballots. But these machines often do not leave a paper trail, and are therefore considered less reliable by the voting-integrity community. This debate has created a rift among the advocates, forcing each side to think long and hard about how exactly to define a “fair election.” For many advocates, auditability — the degree to which an election outcome can be verified (audited) independent of the original vote-tabulating system — is the most important standard. According to this point of view, the only way to assure voters that elections have not been compromised (by incidental code hiccups or intentional tampering) is to create total system transparency — which means physical ballots and the paper trails they make possible. This is considered the ultimate safeguard against election tampering.

National: State And Local Officials Wary Of Federal Government’s Election Security Efforts | NPR

FBI Director James Comey has warned that Russia will try once again to influence U.S. elections, possibly as early as next year. To prepare, the federal government has declared elections to be a part of the nation’s critical infrastructure that demands special attention. But the federal government’s focus has state and local election officials, who are very protective of how they do things now, extremely nervous. They’re mainly concerned that the federal government will tell them how to run their elections — even down to where polling sites should be located — in the name of security.

National: Former Trump adviser admits to 2013 communication with Russian spy | The Washington Post

Carter Page, who served briefly as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, made an appearance in a federal espionage case because he communicated several years ago with a Russian intelligence agent under surveillance by the FBI. In a statement released Tuesday, Page confirmed his role in the 2015 Justice Department spy case, adding another twist to the still-unfolding story of Trump’s peculiar and expanding ties to people connected to Russia. Page said he assisted U.S. prosecutors in their case against Evgeny Buryakov, an undercover Kremlin agent then posing as a bank executive in New York. Buryakov was convicted of espionage and released from federal prison last week, a few months short of completing a 30-month sentence. Buryakov agreed to be immediately deported to Russia.

National: Russian Spies Tried to Recruit Carter Page Before He Advised Trump | The New York Times

Russian intelligence operatives tried in 2013 to recruit an American businessman and eventual foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who is now part of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia’s interference into the American election, according to federal court documents and a statement issued by the businessman. The businessman, Carter Page, met with one of three Russians who were eventually charged with being undeclared officers with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R. The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Mr. Page of wrongdoing.

National: House Democrats to Ryan: Recuse Nunes from Russia probe | The Hill

A group of 20 House Democrats is urging Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to remove Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) from the House Intelligence Committee’s probe of Russian election meddling last year. “Chairman Nunes’ recusal is critical in order to preserve the integrity and independence of the U.S. House of Representatives,” they wrote in a Tuesday letter to Ryan. “Congress must come together in a bipartisan fashion to understand the nature of this attack and the scope of Russian ties to [President Trump’s 2016] campaign, transition team and presidential administration,” they added. “This is about country, not party. Chairman Nunes has demonstrated his bias, and the public will no longer accept the results of this probe as legitimate under his leadership.”

National: How Russian Twitter Bots Pumped Out Fake News During The 2016 Election | NPR

When he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, former FBI agent Clint Watts described how Russians used armies of Twitter bots to spread fake news using accounts that seem to be Midwestern swing-voter Republicans. “So that way whenever you’re trying to socially engineer them and convince them that the information is true, it’s much more simple because you see somebody and they look exactly like you, even down to the pictures,” Watts told the panel, which is investigating Russia’s role in interfering in the U.S. elections. In an interview Monday with NPR’s Kelly McEvers, Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says the Russian misinformation campaign didn’t stop with the election of President Trump.

National: FBI Turns Up the Heat on Russian Election Hacking Investigation | The Fiscal Times

President Donald Trump has been trying very hard to convince his supporters that the ongoing FBI investigation into Russian interference in the US election and possible connections between members of his campaign and the Russian government are some sort of plot against him. Over the past several days, Trump has labeled the stories about the investigation “fake” and “a scam” on Twitter. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to disagree. Over the weekend, The Financial Times revealed that the agency charged with counter-espionage investigations is ramping up its inquiry into Russian election-meddling by bringing a veteran agent back to Washington to head up a new 20-person unit dedicated to the direction of the sprawling effort. One of the sources the FT relied on said that the change reflected a “surge” of new resources into the investigation, and was seen as confirmation that the agency is taking the case extremely seriously. At the same time, Trump has been using his social media accounts to point fingers everywhere but toward himself and his associates.

National: US Ambassador Haley Says Russia Was ‘Certainly’ Involved in U.S. Election | Bloomberg

The U.S. envoy to the United Nations says she’s maintaining a hard line against Russia, even as her boss — President Donald Trump — continues to dismiss reported Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election as “fake” news. “Certainly I think Russia was involved in the election,” Nikki Haley said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” broadcast on Sunday, according to a transcript provided by the network. “There’s no question about that.” Haley, a former Republican governor of South Carolina, made her first Sunday-show appearances since becoming the nation’s top diplomat at the UN as the U.S. prepared to take over the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council.

National: Trump aide accused of Hatch Act violation after urging Amash primary challenge | Politico

A senior adviser to President Donald Trump on Saturday urged a primary challenge against a House Freedom Caucus member, prompting charges that he may have violated federal law against using his official position to sway an election campaign. Dan Scavino Jr., director of social media and senior White House adviser, tweeted that Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) is a “big liability” for his state and encouraged a GOP primary opponent to oust him in 2018. But that tweet, sent from Scavino’s personal Twitter account, immediately landed him in controversy as ethics lawyers called out Scavino for possibly violating the Hatch Act, a Depression-era law that regulates campaigning by government officials.

National: Why Republicans Can’t Find the Big Voter Fraud Conspiracy | Politico

In the fall of 2002, just over a year after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft summoned a group of federal prosecutors to Washington. He had a new mission he wanted them to focus on: voter fraud. “Votes have been bought, voters intimidated and ballot boxes stuffed,” he told the attendees of the Justice Department’s inaugural Voting Integrity Symposium. “Voters have been duped into signing absentee ballots believing they were applications for public relief. And the residents of cemeteries have infamously shown up at the polls on election day.” This might seem an unusually dark portrait of America’s electoral system, coming from the nation’s top prosecutor. But Ashcroft spoke from personal experience. In 2000, as a U.S. Senator from Missouri, he lost his re-election bid to a dead man. His opponent, Democratic Governor Mel Carnahan, died in a plane crash three weeks before Election Day. It was too late to remove the governor’s name from the ballot, so his wife, Jean, announced she would serve his term. Mel Carnahan won by 49,000 votes. Ashcroft and his fellow Missouri Republicans were outraged. Skeptical that voters might simply have preferred any Carnahan to him, Ashcroft and other Republicans accused Democrats in St. Louis of trying to steal the election by keeping the polls open later than usual. They dubbed it a “major criminal enterprise”. That December, George W. Bush nominated the out-of-work Ashcroft to be his first attorney general.

National: DHS on elections systems as critical infrastructure: ‘It was already the law’ | Cyberscoop

A Homeland Security official gave some more insight into their efforts on designating election systems as critical infrastructure shortly after the 2016 presidential election, saying it helped the department streamline communication in the event of a incident. Neil Jenkins, from DHS’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, gave the first detailed account Wednesday of the process leading up to the controversial decision, which was made by departing officials in the final days of the Obama administration and widely panned by state and local authorities. DHS designated election systems in 30,000 jurisdictions as critical infrastructure to ensure there would be someone in regular communication with state and local election officials about cyber threats to national polls. Jenkins told NIST’s Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board that in August and September, when officials first became aware of Russian efforts to interfere with the election, the “started trying to catalogue the services we could offer to state authorities,” to help them shore up network security and protect the systems that tabulated and reported results.

National: Mike Flynn Offers to Testify in Exchange for Immunity | Wall Street Journal

Mike Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has told the Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional officials investigating the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution, according to officials with knowledge of the matter. As an adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and later one of Mr. Trump’s top aides in the White House, Mr. Flynn was privy to some of the most sensitive foreign-policy deliberations of the new administration and was directly involved in discussions about the possible lifting of sanctions on Russia imposed by the Obama administration. He has made the offer to the FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committees through his lawyer but has so far found no takers, the officials said.

National: Three White House officials tied to files shared with House intelligence chairman | The Washington Post

At least three senior White House officials, including the top lawyer for the National Security Council, were involved in the handling of intelligence files that were shared with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and showed that Trump campaign officials were swept up in U.S. surveillance of foreign nationals, according to U.S. officials. The White House role in the matter contradicts assertions by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and adds to mounting concerns that the Trump administration is collaborating with the leader of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Though White House officials have refused to answer questions about the documents shared with Nunes, the White House said in a letter to the House committee Thursday that it had “discovered documents” that might show whether information collection on U.S. persons was mishandled and was prepared to show them to lawmakers.

National: Russian deception influenced election due to Trump’s support, senators hear | The Guardian

Donald Trump’s willingness to embrace Russian disinformation was one of the reasons Russia’s interference in the 2016 election worked, the Senate panel investigating the president’s alleged ties to the country heard on Thursday. Decades of Russian covert attempts to undermine confidence in western institutions, including planting or promoting false news stories or spreading doubt about the integrity of elections, will accelerate in the future unless the US confronts so-called “active measures”, several experts testified to the Senate intelligence committee. “Part of the reason active measures have worked in this US election is because the commander-in-chief has used Russian active measures at time [sic] against his opponents,” said Clint Watts of George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. Those active measures have migrated online with alacrity in recent years. Watts, a former FBI special agent and army officer who came under personal siege from Russian-backed hackers, told the panel’s first public hearing that social media accounts associated with spreading pro-Russian fake news were visible as far back as 2009.

National: FBI Director Comey sought to reveal Russian election meddling last summer: report | The Hill

FBI Director James Comey sought to publish an op-ed as early as last summer about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, but was barred from doing so by the Obama White House, Newsweek reported Wednesday. In a White House meeting in June or July, Comey reportedly brought with him a draft of the proposed op-ed and presented it to top administration officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “He had a draft of it or an outline,” a source with knowledge of the meeting told Newsweek. “He held up a piece of paper in a meeting and said, ‘I want to go forward, what do people think of this?'”

National: Senate Intelligence Committee to start Russia probe interviews next week | The Washington Post

The Senate Intelligence Committee will begin as soon as Monday privately interviewing 20 people in its ongoing investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 election as well as potential ties to the Trump campaign, its leaders said Wednesday. Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said that “if there’s relevance” to those and other interviews that he and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) anticipate scheduling, “they will eventually be part of a public hearing.” The two leaders stood side by side to update reporters about their investigation in a rare joint news conference Wednesday on Capitol Hill, called just as the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation appeared to be grinding to a halt. #url#

National: White House stopped Yates testimony about Russian meddling in presidential election, lawyer says | Los Angeles Times

A lawyer for former deputy Atty. Gen. Sally Yates wrote in letters last week that the Trump administration was trying to limit her testimony at congressional hearings focused on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The hearing was later canceled by the House intelligence committee chairman. In the letters, attorney David O’Neil said he understood the Justice Department was invoking “further constraints” on testimony Yates could provide at a committee hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday. He said the department’s position was that all actions she took as deputy attorney general were “client confidences” that could not be disclosed without written approval. “We believe that the Department’s position in this regard is overbroad, incorrect, and inconsistent with the Department’s historical approach to the congressional testimony of current and former senior officials,” O’Neil wrote in a March 23 letter to Justice Department official Samuel Ramer.

National: Devin Nunes rejects Democrats’ calls to quit Trump-Russia investigation | The Guardian

The embattled House intelligence committee chairman, Devin Nunes, has refused to recuse himself from the committee’s investigation into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, despite calls from Democrats. “Why would I?” asked Nunes, who has lost the confidence of the Democrats on the intelligence committee after a series of allegations that they consider a cover-up for the White House. “It’s the same thing as always around this place: a lot of politics, people get heated, but I’m not going to involve myself with that.” The speaker of the House gave Nunes his full confidence on Tuesday. Asked at a press conference whether he should step down, Paul Ryan, the most senior Republican in Congress, responded simply: “No.” With the Republicans generally united in defense of the inquiry, chances are diminishing for its work to be accepted as definitive. The Republicans are also blocking the establishment of an independent commission into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

National: House Democrats Ask Devin Nunes to Recuse Himself From Russia Inquiry | The New York Times

Top House Democrats on Monday called on the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to recuse himself from the panel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, thrusting the entire inquiry into jeopardy amid what they described as mounting evidence he was too close to President Trump to be impartial. The demands followed revelations that the committee’s chairman, Representative Devin Nunes of California, had met on White House grounds with a source who showed him secret American intelligence reports. The reports, Mr. Nunes said last week, showed that Mr. Trump or his closest associates may have been “incidentally” swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

The new revelation that the information actually came from a meeting held on the grounds of the White House intensified questions about what prompted Mr. Nunes to make the claim about the intelligence gathering, and who gave him the information. Representatives Adam B. Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, suggested that Mr. Nunes, who served on the Trump transition team, was simply too close to the White House to run an independent, thorough inquiry.

National: House spat leaves Senate in driver’s seat on Russia probe | Politico

After a week of partisan rancor that threatened to bring down the House’s probe into Russian interference during the 2016 election, the Senate is quickly realizing it may be the only chamber left that can produce findings free of the cloud of White House meddling. “You don’t have the kind of blow-ups [in the Senate] you had at the House,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Politico. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been able to avoid the partisan fissures that have weakened its House counterpart, and began conducting private interviews with intelligence officials last week. Sources say it also plans to interview Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, who had met in December with the Russian ambassador.

National: The Legislators Working to Thwart the Will of Voters | The Atlantic

… “This isn’t how democracy works,” said Justine Sarver, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a nonprofit that works with progressive ballot campaigns. “You don’t get to pick and choose when you like a process and when you don’t.” Sarver sees a trend of legislatures trying to restrict voters’ ability to make laws and amend state constitutions around the country. The popularity of initiatives has ebbed and flowed across the years, and the roles of defender and critic have been fluid. But there are a few factors that make the present moment especially ripe for such conflicts. First, Republicans dominate state legislatures around the country, thanks to favorable redistricting maps drawn after the 2010 Census, even in states with sizable Democratic-leaning voter bases that want more progressive policies. Second, while ballots sometimes function to deal with purely state-level concerns, policy fights are increasingly nationalized. Groups like BISC and the Fairness Project are working to coordinate state-level pushes around the country on liberal reforms like paid sick leave, minimum-wage hikes, or recreational marijuana. Their opponents are working at the national level too. In November, ProPublica and The New York Times reported on how major corporate lobbies, some convened under the auspices of the Koch brothers’ political network, have sought to push back on ballot measures.

National: Trump Should Address Russia’s Election Interference, McCain Says | Bloomberg

President Donald Trump should discuss Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the U.S. election in November in an effort to fill intelligence gaps, Senator John McCain said. “I would very much like to see the president address this issue including the issue we continue to wrestle with that is the Russian interference in the last election,” McCain said Saturday at a German Marshall Fund forum in Brussels. “There are a lot of answers that are required.” FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee this week that the bureau is probing Russian efforts to “interfere” in the Nov. 8 election, as well as potential ties between Trump’s associates and Moscow during the campaign. The president’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired for making misleading statements about contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak a few weeks before the inauguration.

National: Schiff: Nunes needs to decide if he wants to lead a credible investigation on Russia | The Hill

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) needs to decide if he wants to conduct a credible investigation into the Russian meddling in the presidential election. “We can’t have a credible investigation if one of the members, indeed the chairman, takes all the information he has seen to the White House and doesn’t share it with his own committee,” Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the panel, said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” Schiff was further pressed on whether he believes the chairman of the committee is a “tool of the White House he’s investigating.”