National

National: No evidence SolarWinds hack touched election systems, acting CISA chief says | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

The compromise of products made by software company SolarWinds that allowed hackers to gain access to a wide array of organizations, including federal agencies, Fortune 500 corporations and at least three state governments does not appear to have affected any systems involved with election administration, the acting head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Wednesday. But speaking to the National Association of Secretaries of State winter conference, Brandon Wales, who became the agency’s leader last November, said there is still much more to be learned about the extent of the incident, which is believed to be the work of Russian intelligence agents conducting espionage on U.S.-based networks. “We have no evidence any election systems were compromised as part of this campaign,” Wales said. But, he said, U.S. intelligence still “does not have good information on all the victims.” While CISA continues to address the fallout of the SolarWinds operation, which the Biden administration has made its top cyber priority, Wales spent much of his conversation with secretaries of state recapping the agency’s role in the 2020 election. In particular, he praised efforts like a nationwide tabletop exercise last July that drew more than 2,100 participants from 37 states — against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the quick sharing of information in October that, within 27 hours, enabled U.S. officials to attribute an email campaign threatening voters to the government of Iran.

Full Article: No evidence SolarWinds hack touched election systems, acting CISA chief says

National: Key Takeaways From Trump’s Effort to Overturn the Election | Matthew Rosenberg and Jim Rutenberg/The New York Times

For 77 days between the election and the inauguration, President Donald J. Trump attempted to subvert American democracy with a lie about election fraud that he had been grooming for years. A New York Times examination of the events that unfolded after the election shows how the president — enabled by Republican leaders, advised by conspiracy-minded lawyers and bankrolled by a new class of Trump-era donors — waged an extralegal campaign that convinced tens of millions of Americans the election had been stolen and made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable. Interviews with central players, along with documents, videos and previously unreported emails, tell the story of a campaign that was more coordinated than previously understood, even as it strayed farther from reality with each passing day.

Full Article: Key Takeaways From Trump’s Effort to Overturn the Election – The New York Times

National: GOP lawmakers seek tougher voting rules after record turnout | Anthony Izaguirre and Acacia Coronado/Assocated Press

Republican lawmakers in statehouses across the country are moving swiftly to attack some of the voting methods that fueled the highest turnout for a presidential election in 50 years. Although most legislative sessions are just getting underway, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, has already tallied more than 100 bills in 28 states meant to restrict voting access. More than a third of those proposals are aimed at limiting mail voting, while other bills seek to strengthen voter ID requirements and registration processes, as well as allow for more aggressive means to remove people from voter rolls. “Unfortunately, we are seeing some politicians who want to manipulate the rules of the game so that some people can participate and some can’t,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center. The proposals are advancing not only in Texas and other traditional red states but also in such places as Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania that supported Donald Trump four years ago, only to flip for Joe Biden in November. Many Republicans have said the new bills are meant to shore up public confidence after Trump and his GOP allies, without evidence, criticized the election as fraudulent. Those claims were turned away by dozens of courts and were made even as a group of election officials — including representatives of the federal government’s cybersecurity agency — deemed the 2020 presidential election the “the most secure in American history.” Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, also said he saw no evidence of widespread fraud that would have changed the election results.

Full Article: GOP lawmakers seek tougher voting rules after record turnout

National: Former cyber chief pushes for renewed focus on combating disinformation | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cyber chief Suzanne Spaulding, a key official involved in the response to Russian interference efforts in 2016, is pushing hard for more to be done to combat disinformation and promote civics education as the nation reels from the fallout of the recent election. “When I came out of DHS at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, I came off of a year in which I had spent a ton of time looking at election security,” Spaulding, the former director of the predecessor group to DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told The Hill during a virtual interview last week. “While we had realized that we’ve done pretty well with respect to the security of our election infrastructure, at the end of the day, what we really were worried about was information operations.” Spaulding was the under secretary of the cyber-focused National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, which saw Russian agents launch a sweeping and sophisticated hacking and disinformation campaign designed to sway the election toward former President Trump. Following another heated election that also saw efforts by Russia and Iran to interfere, along with domestic disinformation and misinformation that caused many to lose faith in the outcome of the vote, Spaulding is calling for a renewed focus on democratic education. “Americans need to be reminded of the value of democracy, that it must be fought for because it is under attack, and that it’s worth fighting for not because it’s perfect, but because it is capable of change, but only if all of us take the responsibility for holding institutions accountable and learn how to be more effective agents of change using constitutional means,” she said.

Full Article: Former cyber chief pushes for renewed focus on combating disinformation | TheHill

National: Some ‘Stop the Steal’ protesters did not vote in 2020 election: analysis | Aris Folley/The Hill

A number of people who took part in the pro-Trump mob that overran the U.S. Capitol last month in opposition to the presidential election results did not vote in the race, a new analysis has found. According to CNN, which reviewed voting records from states where rioters were arrested or had a history of residence, eight of those facing charges in connection to the Jan. 6 insurrection did not cast a ballot in the November race. Former U.S. Marine Donovan Crowl was one of those people, according to CNN. Crowl is reportedly a member of the right-wing extremist group Oath Keepers. The group, which the network described as a “self-styled militia organization,” has a reputation for trying to recruit service members and veterans. Crowl’s mother told CNN that the veteran said “they were going to overtake the government if they … tried to take Trump’s presidency from him.” She also said Crowl was known to have expressed frustration during former President Obama’s time in office and confirmed he was a supporter of former President Trump. However, though Crowl was reportedly registered in the past to vote in Ohio, where he is from, a local election official told the network recently that he “never voted nor responded to any of our confirmation notices to keep him registered.”   

Full Article: Some ‘Stop the Steal’ protesters did not vote in 2020 election: analysis | TheHill

National: Trump Impeachment Lawyers Unlikely to Push Election Fraud Claims | Erik Larson and David Yaffe-Bellany/Bloomberg

The two lawyers Donald Trump hired at the last minute to defend him at his Feb. 9 Senate impeachment trial are no strangers to controversial cases but are generally regarded as straight-shooters who won’t push the former president’s wild election-fraud claims. David Schoen and Bruce Castor came on board Sunday after a previous legal team headed by South Carolina lawyer Butch Bowers quit after barely a week, reportedly over Trump’s insistence that they base his impeachment defense on arguments that the 2020 election was stolen. But Schoen told the Washington Post on Sunday he would not make fraud arguments, and a former colleague said he couldn’t see Castor touching Trump’s “preposterous” claims either. “He’s smart and he knows it’s bull,” said David Keightly, who worked with Castor in the district attorney’s office of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Though Schoen has disavowed claiming the election was stolen, he’s no stranger to politically charged arguments. It’s likely Trump turned to the Alabama solo practitioner based on his work last year on behalf of the former president’s longtime ally Roger Stone. Representing Stone in his appeal of his November 2019 conviction for witness tampering and lying to Congress during the probe into Russian election interference, Schoen quickly adopted Trump’s claim that the case was part of a massive “witch hunt” perpetrated by corrupt prosecutors.

Full Article: Trump Impeachment Lawyers Unlikely to Push Election Fraud Claims – Bloomberg

National: What to expect from NASS and NASED conferences | Eric Geller/Politico

The 2020 election may (finally) be over, but election security remains a top issue for state officials, and it’s one of several cyber topics that they plan to discuss at a pair of conferences this week. The National Association of State Election Directors is meeting all week, while the National Association of Secretaries of State meets Tuesday through Friday. To say that officials have their plates full would be an understatement, but scattered in between panels about online notarization, corporate transparency and pandemic emergency orders are sessions that will help shape states’ cybersecurity priorities for the next year and beyond. Secretaries of state will hear from the lawmakers whose committees oversee elections, including the Democrats pushing a sweeping election security and reform bill and the Republicans vehemently opposing it. House Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and incoming Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are likely to receive a frosty reception as they discuss the For the People Act (H.R. 1 and S. 1), a Democratic bill that includes major election security provisions. State election officials have consistently opposed new federal rules covering voting technology and election administration. NASS will also hear from Brandon Wales, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which coordinates cybersecurity assistance to states on issues including ransomware and election security. And secretaries will meet behind closed doors to discuss the cybersecurity lessons from the 2020 election cycle. Over at NASED, two top CISA officials overseeing election security work will discuss lessons from 2020 and priorities for 2021. Other NASED sessions will cover information sharing, incident response, misinformation and pandemic disruptions. Speaking of misinformation, NASS will hold a session about strategies for correcting false election claims.

Source: What to expect from NASS and NASED conferences – POLITICO

National: 77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election | Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg and Michael S. Schmidt/The New York Times

By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts. Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over. Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews. The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge. As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media — that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes.

Full Article: 77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election – The New York Times

National: Which Republicans are most likely to think the election was stolen? Those who dislike Democrats and don’t mind white nationalists. | Jan Zilinsky, Jonathan Nagler and Joshua Tucker/The Washington Post

After an election loss, the defeated party usually looks for narratives to make sense of what happened. Unusually for the United States, in this election, the losing candidate decided to claim, falsely, that he wasn’t truly defeated at all. Existing research shows that partisans often adopt their leaders’ views. We recently fielded a study finding that indeed this was the case, although the magnitude of this effect is still startling: Over 70 percent of Republicans said they agreed with President Trump’s contention that he received more votes than Joe Biden. Nor was this belief limited to those with lower levels of education: A majority of Republicans with college degrees in our sample said they believed that the election results were fraudulent. But the Republicans most likely to make false claims about electoral fraud were those who were the most disdainful of Democrats and who sympathize with white nationalists. From Dec. 16-29, we polled more than 2,600 registered voters (including 962 Republicans and Republican leaners), asking whether they were confident that their votes were counted fairly and accurately. The survey was administered by YouGov, and we weighted all our calculations to make them nationally representative. We asked voters whether they thought that “millions of fraudulent mail and absentee ballots were cast” and whether “voting machines were manipulated to add tens of thousands of votes for Joe Biden.” Finally, we asked for respondents’ reactions to the statement that “thousands of votes were recorded for dead people.” For each of these false statements, more than 50 percent of Republican respondents said it was “very accurate”; over 75 percent of Republican voters said each one was “very accurate” or “somewhat accurate.” Only about 3 percent of Democrats assessed these conspiratorial statements as “very accurate.”

Full Article: Most Republicans say the election was stolen — especially the ones who hate Democrats and don’t mind White nationalists – The Washington Post

National: Republicans considering more than 100 bills to restrict voting rights | Sam Levine/The Guardian

After an election filled with misinformation and lies about fraud, Republicans have doubled down with a surge of bills to further restrict voting access in recent months, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice. There are currently 106 pending bills across 28 states that would restrict access to voting, according to the data. That’s a sharp increase from nearly a year ago, when there were 35 restrictive bills pending across 15 states. The restrictions come on the heels of an election in which there was record turnout and Democrat and Republican election officials alike said there was no evidence of widespread wrongdoing or fraud. There were recounts, audits and lawsuits across many states to back up those assurances. Federal and state officials called the election “the most secure in American history”. Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center, said the surge in anti-voting legislation was “countersensical” given that there were Republican and Democratic wins in key races across the country. “The volume of anti-voter legislation is certainly revealing that a nerve was struck,” she told me. “There are certainly people who are sensitive to the idea of more progress … It ultimately comes down to an anxiety over the browning of America and people in power are afraid of losing their position.”

Full Article: Republicans considering more than 100 bills to restrict voting rights | US news | The Guardian

National: Dominion to Sue Trump? Voting Machine Company Drafts Letter for Ex-US President | Bhaswati Guha Majumder/Business Insider

Dominion Voting System has reportedly drafted a letter for the former US President Donald Trump in case it pursues a lawsuit against him over election fraud defamation, said the company’s spokesperson Michael Steel. As reported, Steel said people who have been pushing conspiracy theories about the company have “attacked a great American company” and undermined the confidence of the countrymen in the democratic system. According to Steel, Dominion would send letters to a “number of figures, right-wing media outlets” and others. He added that the company was making decisions on “a case-by-case basis, building as we go”. Steel was previously the chief press secretary of Republican John Boehner, former Speaker of the US House of Representatives. While talking about Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Steel told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, that he went to every microphone available, every podium, every podcast, every cable news shows to spread lies about alleged election fraud but not in a court of law. “That is because lying in a court of law has consequences. That is why we want to get them into a courtroom where there are consequences for lies and let the American people see the truth and our court system find justice,” he said. After the result of the 2020 Presidential election came out, Trump and his close aides went on a massive campaign promoting false claims of election fraud involving Dominion voting machines. Along with Giuliani, another American attorney, Sidney Powell, who was also part of Trump’s failed legal team to challenge President Joe Biden’s victory, have been named in separate lawsuits for $1.3 billion. Steel said the company felt “very good” about the prospects of winning the lawsuits. “I mean, we’re looking at serious charges,” he added.

Full Article: Dominion to Sue Trump? Voting Machine Company Drafts Letter for Ex-US President

National: Twitter Troll Tricked 4,900 Democrats in Vote-by-Phone Scheme, U.S. Says | Nicole Hong/The New York Times

A man who was known as a far-right Twitter troll was arrested on Wednesday and charged with spreading disinformation online that tricked Democratic voters in 2016 into trying to cast their ballots by phone instead of going to the polls. Federal prosecutors accused Douglass Mackey, 31, of coordinating with co-conspirators to spread memes on Twitter falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton’s supporters could vote by sending a text message to a specific phone number. The co-conspirators were not named in the complaint, but one of them was Anthime Gionet, a far-right media personality known as “Baked Alaska,” who was arrested after participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, according to a person briefed on the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. As a result of the misinformation campaign, prosecutors said, at least 4,900 unique phone numbers texted the number in a futile effort to cast votes for Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Mackey was arrested on Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, Fla., in what appeared to be the first criminal case in the country involving voter suppression through the spread of disinformation on Twitter.

Full Article: Twitter Troll Tricked 4,900 Democrats in Vote-by-Phone Scheme, U.S. Says – The New York Times

National: Over 150 US Election Apps Found to be Potentially Fraudulent | Jack Turner/Tech.co

A new study has found that some of the apps that voters have used for election information may be potentially misleading, and even pose a security risk. Android users were found to be the most at risk, with 95% of the offending apps on that platform. Some of the apps were found to originate from countries with looser privacy regulations than the US. Of the 182 election apps scrutinised by cybersecurity firm RiskIQ, it was discovered that 152 were fraudulent or malicious. This means that although these apps claimed to be authorized by the government or state, they were nothing of the sort. The report found that 87 of these fraudulent apps were based in the US, but many were found to be from countries with different standards of privacy regulation, such as China and Panama. While it’s relatively easy to raise complaints against the US-based apps, those from outside the US are likely to prove much more difficult to take action against and remove. The RiskIQ findings also reinforce the message that you should only download apps from the official store for your device. Only 1.2% of the fraudulent apps found originated from the main online stores such as Google Play or the Apple App store. The vast majority came from other sources, such as smaller app stores with poorer security measures. Android users were found to be the most at risk from fraudulent election apps, with the platform attracting 95% of the fraudulent apps. The end result of downloading one of these apps is that the user could be fed misinformation, potentially from foreign agents looking to disrupt democracy, or could even have their device compromised and their data stolen.

Full Article: Over 150 US Election Apps Found to be Potentially Fraudulent :Tech.co

National: Trump Pressed Justice Department to Go Directly to Supreme Court to Overturn Election Results | Jess Bravin and Sadie Gurman/Wall Street Journal

In his last weeks in office, former President Donald Trump considered moving to replace the acting attorney general with another official ready to pursue unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, and he pushed the Justice Department to ask the Supreme Court to invalidate President Biden’s victory, people familiar with the matter said. Those efforts failed due to pushback from his own appointees in the Justice Department, who refused to file what they viewed as a legally baseless lawsuit in the Supreme Court. Later, other senior department officials threatened to resign en masse should Mr. Trump fire then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, according to several people familiar with the discussions. Senior department officials, including Mr. Rosen, former Attorney General William Barr and former acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall refused to file the Supreme Court case, concluding that there was no basis to challenge the election outcome and that the federal government had no legal interest in whether Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden won the presidency, some of these people said. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy, Patrick Philbin, also opposed Mr. Trump’s idea, which was promoted by his outside attorneys, these people said. “He wanted us, the United States, to sue one or more of the states directly in the Supreme Court,” a former administration official said. “The pressure got really intense” after a lawsuit Texas filed in the Supreme Court against four states Mr. Biden won was dismissed on Dec. 11, the official said. An outside lawyer working for Mr. Trump drafted a brief the then-president wanted the Justice Department to file, people familiar with the matter said, but officials refused.

Full Article: Trump Pressed Justice Department to Go Directly to Supreme Court to Overturn Election Results – WSJ

National: Dominion voting machine firm sues Giuliani for more than $1.3 billion | Emma Brown/The Washington Post

Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit Monday seeking more than $1.3 billion from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the lawyer for former president Donald Trump who played a key role in promoting the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged. The 107-page complaint, filed in federal court in D.C., cites dozens of statements Giuliani made about Dominion — on Twitter, in appearances on conservative media shows and on his own podcast — to promote the “false preconceived narrative” that the election was stolen from Trump. That “Big Lie” not only damaged Dominion’s reputation and business and led to death threats against its employees, but also laid the groundwork for hundreds of people to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the complaint says. Five people died as a result of the attack, and dozens of law enforcement officials were injured. In a speech just before the Capitol was stormed, Giuliani spoke of “crooked Dominion machines” that were used to steal the election and suggested that Trump supporters conduct “trial by combat.” Federal officials have charged more than 135 people in connection with the riot, and more are expected to be charged as the investigation continues. “Having been deceived by Giuliani and his allies into thinking that they were not criminals — but patriots ‘Defend[ing] the Republic’ from Dominion and its co-conspirators — they then bragged about their involvement in the crime on social media,” the complaint says.

Full Article: Dominion voting machine firm sues Giuliani for more than $1.3 billion – The Washington Post

National: What we know about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election | Philip Bump/The Washington Post

Let’s assume for the moment that former president Donald Trump’s efforts to undercut the results of the 2020 election began only when the sun rose the day after last year’s election. That’s not the case, clearly; Trump had been alleging for months that the results would be marred by fraud, part of an effort to inoculate his base against a seemingly likely loss. Even identifying the starting point as sunrise is a hedge, given that Trump began claiming in the middle of the night after polls closed that he’d won, based on the incomplete tally of cast ballots. But those assertions were different from what followed the election itself. Over the two months between President Biden’s victory being announced and the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who believed the lie that the election had been stolen, Trump repeatedly tried to somehow wrench a victory out of his rejection by voters. It was an effort that involved unprecedented attempts to persuade those he saw as allies to undo the results of a democratic election. Here is what we know of the breadth of those efforts as of writing.

Repeated claims and lawsuits focused on alleged fraud. The central effort undertaken by Trump was to continue his claims that the election was tainted by fraud. This is why he’d worked to establish all of that groundwork, of course: to be able to claim after the fact that votes cast by mail were necessarily suspect. This was his play all along, to suggest that only votes cast on Election Day — votes that skewed heavily for him — could be trusted. It convinced a lot of his supporters, but there’s no credible evidence that any significant electoral fraud was committed last year. Trump was never beholden to that “credible” qualifier, though, amplifying a truly dazzling number of already or soon-to-be debunked claims as though the sheer volume of allegations would itself serve as a substitute for evidence. That was explicitly how his team treated a series of affidavits collected from volunteers and supporters — documents presented as suggesting rampant fraud simply by virtue of their existence. No substantial fraud was ever uncovered from those documents or anything else.

Full Article: What we know about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election – The Washington Post

National: The Justice Deparment’s inspector general opens an investigation into any efforts to overturn the election. | Katie Benner/The New York Times

A Justice Department watchdog has opened an investigation into whether any current or former officials tried improperly to wield the powers of the department to undo the results of the presidential election, his office announced on Monday. The announcement by the office of the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, followed a New York Times article that detailed efforts by Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, to push top leaders to falsely and publicly assert that ongoing election fraud investigations cast doubt on the Electoral College results. That standoff prompted President Donald J. Trump to consider replacing the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and install Mr. Clark at the top of the department to carry out that plan. “The inspector general is initiating an investigation into whether any former or current D.O.J. official engaged in an improper attempt to have D.O.J. seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” Mr. Horowitz said in a statement. The investigation will encompass all allegations concerning the conduct of former and current department employees, though it would be limited to the Justice Department because other agencies do not fall within Mr. Horowitz’s purview. He said he was announcing the inquiry to reassure the public that the matter is being scrutinized. On Saturday, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, urged Mr. Horowitz to open an investigation, saying that it was “unconscionable that a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will.”

Full Article: The Justice Dept.’s inspector general opens an investigation into any efforts to overturn the election. – The New York Times

National: Trump and Justice Department Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General | Katie Benner/The New York Times

The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results. The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark. The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed? The answer was unanimous. They would resign. Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis. The previously unknown chapter was the culmination of the president’s long-running effort to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda. He also pressed Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels, including one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election equipment that Mr. Trump’s allies had falsely said was working with Venezuela to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Full Article: Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting AG – The New York Times

National: After big hack of U.S. government, Biden enlists ‘world class’ cybersecurity team | Christopher Bing and Joseph Menn/Reuters

President Joe Biden is hiring a group of national security veterans with deep cyber expertise, drawing praise from former defense officials and investigators as the U.S. government works to recover from one of the biggest hacks of its agencies attributed to Russian spies. “It is great to see the priority that the new administration is giving to cyber,” said Suzanne Spaulding, director of the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cybersecurity was demoted as a policy field under the Trump administration. It discontinued the Cybersecurity Coordinator position at the White House, shrunk the State Department’s cyber diplomacy wing, and fired federal cybersecurity leader Chris Krebs in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s Nov. 3 election defeat. Disclosed in December, the hack struck eight federal agencies and numerous companies, including software provider SolarWinds Corp. U.S. intelligence agencies publicly attributed it to Russian state actors. Moscow has denied involvement in the hack. Under a recent law, Biden must open a cyber-focused office reporting to a new National Cyber Director, who will coordinate the federal government’s vast cyber capabilities, said Mark Montgomery, a former congressional staffer who helped design the role.

Full Article: After big hack of U.S. government, Biden enlists ‘world class’ cybersecurity team | Reuters

National: Republicans plan voting overhauls after Biden’s win | Reid Wilson/The Hill

Republican state legislators are advancing a rush of new bills aimed at limiting voting access, and especially access to voting by mail, in the wake of President Biden’s victory last year in the highest-turnout election in American history. The proposals come after months of pressure from former President Trump, who with the help of Republican allies spread false claims and conspiracy theories related to the election, including that widespread voter fraud cost him a victory. In many states, Republicans have used those claims to cite unspecified concerns about the integrity of their own elections, despite elections officials who show proof that counts were fair and accurate. Democrats and voting rights advocates counter that the proposals are thinly veiled attempts to restrict access to the polls.  “In the last 10 years, we have seen some politicians try to enact changes to the rules of the game so that some people can participate and some people can’t,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “Rather than competing for voters, there are some politicians that instead would prefer to lock people out of the process.” In some states, the new bills would roll back emergency voting provisions put in place during the pandemic. In others, the proposals go so far as to repeal long-standing practices implemented more than a decade ago with bipartisan support.

Full Article: Republicans plan voting overhauls after Biden’s win | TheHill

National: State Republicans push new voting restrictions after Trump’s loss | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Republican legislators across the country are preparing a slew of new voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat. Georgia will be the focal point of the GOP push to change state election laws, after Democrats narrowly took both Senate seats there and President Joe Biden carried the state by an even smaller margin. But state Republicans in deep-red states and battlegrounds alike are citing Trump’s meritless claims of voter fraud in 2020 — and the declining trust in election integrity Trump helped drive — as an excuse to tighten access to the polls. Some Republican officials have been blunt about their motivations: They don’t believe they can win unless the rules change. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning,” Alice O’Lenick, a Republican on the Gwinnett County, Ga., board of elections in suburban Atlanta, told the Gwinnett Daily Post last week. She has since resisted calls to resign. The chair of the Texas Republican Party has called on the legislature there to make “election integrity” the top legislative priority in 2021, calling, among other things, for a reduction in the number of days of early voting. Jason Miller, a top Trump adviser, told the conservative site Just The News that Trump plans to remain involved in “voting integrity” efforts, keeping the issue at the top of Republicans’ minds. And VoteRiders, a nonprofit group that helps prospective voters get an ID if they need one to cast a ballot, said it is expecting a serious push for new voter ID laws in at least five states, while North Carolina could potentially implement new voter ID policies that have been held up in court.

Full Article: State Republicans push new voting restrictions after Trump’s loss – POLITICO

Enduring Lessons From Securing the Election | Dennis Fisher/Decipher

In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Chris Krebs had a problem. Actually, he had a few, but the biggest one was getting election officials on the state and local level to take the security threat to the integrity of the election seriously. As director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the time, Krebs was heading up the effort to assess the security and resilience of the nation’s election infrastructure and look for the kind of soft spots that malicious actors–foreign or domestic–might target. The concern wasn’t so much that actors would go after the electronic voting machines, but rather the computers used to tabulate the votes and the networks on which they sit. Attackers from China, Russia, and other countries whose interests don’t necessarily align with the United States have demonstrated the willingness and ability to penetrate government and private sector networks and remain inside for long periods of time. CISA officials and their colleagues at the FBI and other agencies warned state and local officials about the seriousness of the threat, but the message wasn’t getting through for some reason. Perhaps the spectre of state-sponsored hackers from halfway around the world was too abstract, or maybe there were too many other things to worry about, but the reality of the threats wasn’t landing. So Krebs changed tactics. “You can talk about Russia and China and Iran all day long and when security teams aren’t seeing these actors walking into their environments waving flags, because they’re patient it’s hard to make the sell,” Krebs said during a keynote at the SANS Institute Cyber Threat Intelligence Summit Thursday. “What we were seeing do the most damage was ransomware actors conducting functionally catastrophic attacks. We made a hard pivot from talking about China and Russia to talking about ransomware, and we saw a shift as the light went on that it wasn’t just about state actors, it was about disruptive non-state actors. And to me that was one of the biggest advances we made.”

Full Article: Enduring Lessons From Securing the Election | Decipher

National: Senate Democrats seek momentum for voting, political money overhaul | Kate Ackley/Roll Call

Senate Democrats, on the cusp of holding the slimmest possible majority in the chamber, signaled Tuesday a symbolic first order of business: a major overhaul of the nation’s voting, campaign finance and ethics laws. The measure, dubbed HR 1 in the House and now christened in the Senate as S 1 to signify that it is a top priority, died in the GOP-controlled Senate last Congress. It could see the same fate again in the 117th Congress unless Democrats remove the 60-vote threshold to end filibusters on legislation, a change the party’s base eagerly wants but remains in doubt. Advocates pushing for the overhaul said they were mobilizing anew to build public support in both chambers. House Democrats expect to take up the measure as soon as this month or next, congressional aides said, as it closely tracks the same bill in the last Congress. Congressional Democrats, as well as representatives of outside groups pushing for passage of the package, said the overhaul would help shore up voters’ confidence in a democracy damaged by a violent attempted insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and after four years of corruption scandals and flouting of ethics norms during Donald Trump’s presidency. “I think that every American has received a message that the integrity of our elections is incredibly important, and so in terms of accountability for the events of this past year, there’s probably nothing more important than passing the For the People Act,” said Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley. But he would not predict what the party will do about the filibuster. “It’s too soon to say how we’ll pursue this,” he said. The bill would create nationwide automatic voter registration and require paper ballots in all jurisdictions. It would set up a 6-to-1 optional public financing system to pay for congressional campaigns and tighten disclosure rules for political groups and super PACs that spend money to influence elections.

Full Article: Democrats seek momentum for voting, political money overhaul – Roll Call

National: U.S. intelligence head who warned of foreign election threats steps down Matthew Choi/Politico

U.S. counterintelligence chief William Evanina stepped down from his position Wednesday, ending a decades-long career in the intelligence community combating leaks and raising the alarm about foreign election interference. “I am honored and humbled to have been surrounded by amazing, dedicated, and vigilent professionals serving around the nation, and the globe, protecting our great nation. I want to especially thank the women and men of NCSC, and the Intelligence Community, for being the best in the world,” he said in a LinkedIn post announcing his retirement Thursday. Evanina left his position after six years as director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and more than two decades at the FBI. Toward the end of his career, in the final year of President Donald Trump’s term, Evanina was charged with overseeing briefings on foreign threats to election security. It was a politically precarious spot, with Trump and his Republican allies often brushing off Russian election interference and steering attention toward China and Iran. Congressional Democrats in turn expressed discontent with Evanina, portraying him as blanching the Russian election threat in a summary on the issue they said was so vague it was “almost meaningless”. But Evanina’s decades-long career helped him dodge the partisan frays of the Trump era, and he had been celebrated by colleagues and members of both parties as effective and aggressive. A former senior FBI official who worked closely with Evanina called him the “Dr. Fauci of the counterintelligence community” in a comment to POLITICO last summer.

Full Article: U.S. intelligence head who warned of foreign election threats steps down – POLITICO

National: Senate Democrats file ethics complaint against Hawley, Cruz over election challenge | Marianne Levine/Politico

A group of Senate Democrats filed an ethics complaint Thursday against GOP Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, over their Jan. 6 efforts to object to the 2020 presidential election results. “By proceeding with their objections to the electors after the violent attack, Senators Cruz and Hawley lent legitimacy to the mob’s cause and made future violence more likely,” the senators wrote in a letter to incoming Senate Ethics panel Chair Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Vice Chair James Lankford (R-Okla.). The letter, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), requests that the panel investigate several issues, including whether Cruz (R-Texas) and Hawley (R-Mo) encouraged the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol; whether they coordinated with organizers of the pro-Trump rally immediately before the riot; whether they received donations from any organizations or donors that also funded the rally; and whether the senators “engaged in criminal conduct or unethical or improper behavior.” Hawley, in a statement, described the complaint as “a flagrant abuse of the Senate ethics process and a flagrant attempt to exact partisan revenge” and said Democrats appeared “intent on weaponizing every tool at their disposal.” A spokesperson for Cruz said in a statement that “it is unfortunate that some congressional Democrats are disregarding President Biden’s call for unity and are instead playing political games by filing frivolous ethics complaints against their colleagues.” Both senators have denied allegations that they incited the Jan. 6 insurrection, which led to the death of five people, and condemned the violence. But in Thursday’s letter, the Democratic senators argue that by announcing they would challenge the election results, Hawley and Cruz gave credibility to former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

Full Article: Senate Democrats file ethics complaint against Hawley, Cruz over election challenge – POLITICO

National: How Gerrymandering Will Protect Republicans Who Challenged the Election | Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio comes from a duck-shaped district that stretches across parts of 14 counties and five media markets and would take nearly three hours to drive end to end. Designed after the 2010 census by Ohio Republicans intent on keeping Mr. Jordan, then a three-term congressman, safely in office, the district has produced the desired result. He has won each of his last five elections by at least 22 percentage points. The outlines of Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District have left Mr. Jordan, like scores of other congressional and state lawmakers, accountable only to his party’s electorate in Republican primaries. That phenomenon encouraged the Republican Party’s fealty to President Trump as he pushed his baseless claims of election fraud. That unwavering loyalty was evident on Jan. 6, when Mr. Jordan and 138 other House Republicans voted against certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential election. Their decision, just hours after a violent mob had stormed the Capitol, has repelled many of the party’s corporate benefactors, exposed a fissure with the Senate Republican leadership and tarred an element of the party as insurrectionists. But while Mr. Trump faces an impeachment trial and potential criminal charges for his role in inciting the rioting, it is unlikely that Mr. Jordan and his compatriots will face any reckoning at the ballot box.

Full Article: How Gerrymandering Will Protect Republicans Who Challenged the Election – The New York Times

National: Election Misinformation went down after Twitter banned Trump | Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg/The Washington Post

Online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies last week, research firm Zignal Labs has found, underscoring the power of tech companies to limit the falsehoods poisoning public debate when they act aggressively. The new research by the San Francisco-based analytics firm reported that conversations about election fraud dropped from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across several social media sites in the week after Trump was banned from Twitter. Election disinformation had for months been a major subject of online misinformation, beginning even before the Nov. 3 election and pushed heavily by Trump and his allies. Zignal found it dropped swiftly and steeply on Twitter and other platforms in the days after the Twitter ban took hold on Jan. 8.

Full Article: Misinformation went down after Twitter banned Trump – The Washington Post

National: FBI investigating whether Capitol assault suspect tried to sell Pelosi computer to Russian intelligence service | Luke Barr andJack Date/ABC News

The FBI is investigating whether a woman who allegedly participated in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol stole a computer or hard drive from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the intention of selling it to Russia’s intelligence service. According to an FBI criminal complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., Sunday, a witness called the FBI with a tip that a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, woman, Riley June Williams, is seen in a video published by ITV, a British broadcasting network, depicting Williams’ presence in the Capitol during the riot. The witness told the FBI he or she was formerly a romantic partner of Williams. The witness claimed to have spoken to friends of Williams who allegedly showed the witness a video of Williams “taking a laptop or hard drive from Pelosi’s office,” according to the complaint. The sale to Russia fell through, according to the witness account described by the FBI in the complaint, and Williams “still has the computer device or destroyed it.” The matter remains under investigation, the document stated. The complaint alleges Williams committed the criminal violations of entering restricted building and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. She is not charged with stealing Pelosi’s computer. Williams’ whereabouts were unknown until late Monday when the Department of Justice reported she had been taken into custody in Pennsylvania. “It appears that WILLIAMS has fled,” according to the document, and “sometime after January 6, 2021, WILLIAMS changed her telephone number and deleted what I believe were her social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, and Parler.”

Full Article: FBI investigating whether Capitol assault suspect tried to sell Pelosi computer to Russian intelligence service – ABC News

National: Pelosi laptop theft highlights ‘real counterintelligence concerns’ of Capitol riot, lawmaker says | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

There are growing concerns that U.S. adversaries may be seeking ways to benefit from the Capitol assault – and that some of rioters may have been looking to work with them. The FBI is investigating claims that Riley June Williams stole a laptop or or hard drive from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and intended to sell the device to Russia’s intelligence services by way of a friend who lives in the country. “The idea that a group of so-called ‘patriots’ would sell a government computer to the Russians should tell you everything you need to know about the people who assaulted the Capitol,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “There are real counterintelligence concerns associated with a breach like the one that occurred on January 6th.”Williams was arrested Monday in her home state of Pennsylvania, and it’s unclear if she still had the laptop in her possession. She has been charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct in the Capitol, Spencer S. Hsu and Hannah Knowles report. The case is the first with foreign intelligence implications. There could be more. The Justice Department is treating its investigation into the riot “just like a significant international counterterrorism or counterintelligence operation,” acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin said last week. Sherwin previously stated that his office was still assessing how many of the more than 100 cases related to the Capitol riot involved “national security equities.” He previously said that “multiple devices” were stolen. The FBI also is looking into potential financial ties between some of the groups that incited the riot and foreign governments, 

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Pelosi laptop theft highlights ‘real counterintelligence concerns’ of Capitol riot, lawmaker says – The Washington Post