National

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

National: American Thinker apologizes to Dominion after getting letter from defamation attorneys | Celine Castronuovo/The Hill

Conservative opinion website American Thinker on Friday issued a statement apologizing for printing false claims about Dominion Voting Systems after the voting machine company’s lawyers accused the blog of defamation. American Thinker editor and publisher Thomas Lifson posted an online statement saying that the website had received a “lengthy letter from Dominion’s defamation lawyers explaining why they believe that their client has been the victim of defamatory statements.” Lifson said that, “Having considered the full import of the letter,” he admitted that several pieces on the website “falsely accuse” Dominion “of conspiring to steal the November 2020 election from Donald Trump.” Lifson added that the pieces “rely on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion’s supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud on Dominion’s machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes, and other claims falsely stating that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted fraudulently.” The opinion website head confirmed, “These statements are completely false and have no basis in fact,” and that “Industry experts and public officials alike have confirmed that Dominion conducted itself appropriately and that there is simply no evidence to support these claims.” “It was wrong for us to publish these false statements,” Lifson continued. “We apologize to Dominion for all of the harm this caused them and their employees,” the statement added, along with an apology to readers for what it called a “grave error.”

Full Article: American Thinker apologizes to Dominion after getting letter from defamation attorneys | TheHill

National: Rep. Lauren Boebert led ‘large’ Capitol tour before riots, Rep. Steve Cohen says | Andrea Salcedo/The Washington Post

Amid a push to investigate whether any GOP lawmakers aided rioters at the Capitol, several Democrats last week accused an unnamed House Republican of leading groups on “reconnaissance” tours of the building before the Jan. 6 attack. Now, two Democratic lawmakers say they personally saw one Republican — Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado — with a “large” group in a tunnel connected to the Capitol days before the attempted insurrection that left four rioters and one police officer dead.Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said on Monday that he and Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) had both seen Boebert in the tunnel outside the Cannon House Office Building with a group sometime in the three days before the riots. He said he didn’t know who was in the group or if anyone with Boebert later participated in the attack. “Congressman [John] Yarmuth refreshed my recollection yesterday,” Cohen told Jim Sciutto on “CNN Newsroom.” “We saw Boebert taking a group of people for a tour sometime after the 3rd and before the 6th. … Now whether these people were people that were involved in the insurrection or not, I do not know.” Boebert, a gun rights advocate with links to the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, called Cohen’s remarks “false” and “slanderous” in a letter sent to the congressman on Monday, which she also shared on Twitter. Boebert said she had taken a number of family members into the Capitol on Jan. 2 for a tour and Jan. 3 to take pictures on the day she was sworn into office, but had not given any other tours.

Full Article: Rep. Lauren Boebert led ‘large’ Capitol tour before riots, Rep. Steve Cohen says – The Washington Post

National: Urgency mounts for new voting rights bill | Marty Johnson/The Hill

Urgency is mounting among voter rights groups and Black lawmakers for President-elect Joe Biden to make a new and improved voting rights bill a top priority. In his first address to the American people as president-elect back in November, Biden made a bold pledge: that he’d have Black Americans’ backs. The promise holds even more weight following last week’s insurrection at the Capitol that featured strong overtures of white nationalism. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore the original 1965 Voting Rights Act that was gutted by a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2013. Given the slim majority Democrats will now enjoy the Senate, proponents are hopeful Biden will make it a headline of his agenda. Biden transition spokesperson Jamal Brown told The Hill that the former vice president “will work to enact the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act when in office.” The bill prevent state legislatures from unilaterally making changes to voting procedures, which they’ve been able to do since the 2013 ruling. In states where voting rights activists were successful in boosting the turnout of voters of color, proposals already exist to have sweeping roll backs of expanded voting rights that many states reluctantly introduced because of the pandemic. 

Full Article: Urgency mounts for new voting rights bill | TheHill

National: Biden to Restore Homeland Security and Cybersecurity Aides to Senior White House Posts | David E. Sanger/The New York Times

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., facing the rise of domestic terrorism and a crippling cyberattack from Russia, is elevating two White House posts that all but disappeared in the Trump administration: a homeland security adviser to manage matters as varied as extremism, pandemics and natural disasters, and the first deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology. The White House homeland security adviser will be Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, according to transition officials. She is a longtime aide to Mr. Biden who served under President Barack Obama as senior director for Europe and then deputy secretary of energy, where she oversaw the modernization of the nuclear arsenal. And for the complex task of bolstering cyberoffense and defense, Mr. Biden has carved out a role for Anne Neuberger, a rising official at the National Security Agency. She ran the Russia Small Group, which mounted a pre-emptive strike on the Kremlin’s cyberactors during the 2018 midterm elections, part of an effort to counter Moscow after its interference in the 2016 presidential election. For the past 15 months, she has overseen the agency’s Cybersecurity Directorate, a newly formed organization to prevent digital threats to sensitive government and military industry networks. But it has also been an incubator for emerging technologies, including the development of impenetrable cryptography — the National Security Agency’s original mission nearly 70 years ago — with a new generation of quantum computers. Taken together, the two appointments show how Mr. Biden appears determined to rebuild a national security apparatus that critics of the Trump administration say withered for the past four years. The new White House team will focus on threats that were battering the United States even before the coronavirus pandemic reordered the nation’s challenges.

Full Article: Biden to Restore Homeland Security and Cybersecurity Aides to Senior White House Posts – The New York Times

National: Can the vote be trusted? A conversation on US election integrity. | Jessica Mendoza and Samantha Laine Perfas/CSMonitor

Ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, Americans remain divided over the integrity of the election. This is despite Congress having certified the results, and officials across the political spectrum assuring the public that the 2020 election was secure – perhaps “the most secure in American history.” But what does it mean to have a secure election? Is it ensuring that our systems are protected from cyberattacks? That we have ways to independently verify every vote? What about consistently investing in new technologies and resources for election officials? For Mark Lindeman, interim co-director of the nonpartisan organization Verified Voting, it’s all of the above – and then some.  “Doing better objectively and technically does not automatically translate to protecting American elections,” he says. “Voters need to have some fundamental belief that election results are trustworthy. And we can’t congratulate ourselves to the extent that we’re failing to provide that.”  

Full Article: Election doubts abounded in US. What’s reality of ballot integrity? – CSMonitor.com

National: Chris Krebs, the election security chief fired by Trump, warns ‘disinformation is upending our society and literally killing Americans’ as he launches a new commission to help fix it | Jeff Elder/Business Insider

Aiming to address disinformation he says is “upending our society and literally killing Americans,” Christopher Krebs, the federal cybersecurity official who challenged the president on election disinformation, will lead a new Aspen Institute commission he said will take a careful approach to an urgent problem. “America needs to pay attention to what’s unfolding right now and work to ensure that we’re not on the verge of a significant breakdown in democracy and civil society,” Krebs told Insider in written remarks. Krebs will chair a new, bipartisan commission announced Wednesday by the Aspen Institute think tank — called The Commission on Information Disorder — and funded by a $3.25 million grant from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. This new group intends to help connect the private and public sectors to help find solutions for these most complicated of policy issues. Krebs said the commission will pull different segments of society together so that government, tech, and industry can come together to study, discuss, and collaborate on the issue. “The way forward requires industry, government, and civil society taking a hard look at the deep divisions that allow these falsities to propagate, and to recognize that each has a core role to play. That is one of the primary goals of this new commission.”

Full Article: Krebs: Disinformation ‘upending our society’ and killing Americans – Business Insider

National: Lawyers face fallout from fueling Trump’s false claims of election fraud | Peter Stone/The Guardian

Prominent lawyers who helped fuel Donald Trump’s baseless charges of election fraud to try and thwart Joe Biden’s win, are now facing potentially serious legal and financial problems of their own tied to their aggressive echoing of Trump’s false election claims, say former Department of Justice lawyers and legal experts. They include a federal investigation into the Capitol attack by a pro-Trump mob, possible disbarment and a defamation lawsuit. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who led Trump’s conspiratorial drive to overturn the election and gave an incendiary talk to the Trump rally right before the march on the Capitol began, could be ensnared in a federal investigation of the attack and is facing a disbarment complaint in New York. Pro-Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Cleta Mitchell have, respectively, been hit with a defamation lawsuit for making false claims, and losing her law firm post after coming under scrutiny for her work promoting Trump’s false claims. “I never saw allegations of misconduct that I think are as seriously unethical as the conduct of lawyers who have been propounding the false claims of President Trump,” said Mary McCord, who led the DoJ’s national security division at the end of the Obama administration until May 2017, and also served for six years on the DC Circuit’s Grievance Committee.

Full Article: Lawyers face fallout from fueling Trump’s false claims of election fraud | Law (US) | The Guardian

National: How antifa conspiracy theory traveled from fringe to floor of Congress | Aleszu Bajak and Javier Zarracina/USA Today

While much of America watched a mob of Trump supporters overrun police and break into the halls of Congress Wednesday afternoon, members of the far right chatted up an imaginary narrative of what was really going on. After weeks of planting the idea, dozens of extremists used social media to promote an idea with no basis in reality – that the people besieging the Capitol were actually far-left agitators disguised as Trump supporters. The trickle of claims became a flood in a matter of hours. It started in secretive corners of the web such as 4chan, but tweets and articles from more and more mainstream conservative news sites followed. It began spiking around 1 p.m., just after rioters started breaching barriers outside the Capitol. Soon, Fox News personalities were sharing the same speculation that circulated among believers in the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory. By 10:15 p.m., the “false flag” story reached the House floor that rioters had invaded earlier in the day. Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida told his shaken colleagues in a speech: “They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”

Full Article: How antifa conspiracy theory traveled from fringe to floor of Congress

National: Far-right groups make plans for continued attacks before and after Inauguration Day | Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet and Razzan Nakhlawi/The Washington Post

President Trump’s incitement of his supporters before their attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 has galvanized a nationwide extremist movement and fueled those determined to disrupt the transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden and violently challenge the legitimacy of the election for months — and possibly years, according to U.S. officials and independent experts. U.S. officials have warned authorities nationwide to be on alert for potential acts of violence at state capitols, as well as a possible second attack on the Capitol or on the White House. Law enforcement authorities have said extremists might use firearms and explosives and are monitoring online calls to rally in cities nationwide beginning Sunday. Security at the inaugural ceremony in Washington on Wednesday probably will be the most intense ever. At the center of the amorphous but increasingly motivated extremist movement sits the current president, now twice impeached, deprived of his social media megaphones but still exerting a powerful influence over his followers who take his baseless claims of election fraud as an article of faith.

Full Article: Far-right groups make plans for continued attacks before and after Inauguration Day – The Washington Post

National: ES&S Threatens Researchers for Exposing Valid Security Flaws | Karl Bode/Vice News

A major manufacturer of voting machine hardware has threatened researchers for highlighting proven privacy and security vulnerabilities in their products. Last week, Election Systems and Software (ES&S) fired off a cease and desist letter to SMART Elections, a New York State based non-partisan project designed to bring greater public awareness to the lack of security in electronic election equipment. In the letter, ES&S accuses the organization of “false, defamatory, and disparaging” comments related to the company’s ExpressVote XL touchscreen-enabled barcode voting system, which SMART Elections has been warning New York State officials suffers from design flaws that make it open to vote manipulation. “Security experts and good government groups say that the ExpressVote XL has a flawed design that makes it dangerously insecure, and that it is also glitchy and over-priced,” the group warned. “Many of them strongly oppose its use. Voters with disabilities have often struggled to use it.” ES&S didn’t take the criticism particularly well, and in its cease and desist letter claims the organization was engaged in “defamation and trade disparagement.” “We demand that you immediately and permanently cease and desist from communicating false allegations about ES&S, and immediately retract and correct the false, defamatory and disparaging accusations you have made against ES&S,” the company threatened. ES&S lawyers appear particularly annoyed by claims that the “ExpressVote XL can add, delete, or change the votes on individual ballots,” will “deteriorate our security and our ability to have confidence in our elections,” and is a “bad voting machine” in general. But many experts, including Princeton University professor Andrew Appel, say the accusations and criticism levied against ES&S are absolutely correct. “The ExpressVote XL, if hacked, can add, delete, or change votes on individual ballots — and no voting machine is immune from hacking,” Appel said. “That’s why optical-scan voting machines are the way to go, because they can’t change what’s printed on the ballot. And let me explain some more: The ExpressVote XL, if adopted, will deteriorate our security and our ability to have confidence in our elections, and indeed it is a bad voting machine. And expensive, too!”

Full Article: Voting Machine Company Threatens Researchers for Exposing Valid Security Flaws

National: McConnell Privately Backs Impeachment as House Moves to Charge Trump | Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos/The New York Times

Senator Mitch McConnell has concluded that President Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes that Democrats’ move to impeach him will make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people familiar with Mr. McConnell’s thinking. The private assessment of Mr. McConnell, the most powerful Republican in Congress, emerged on the eve of a House vote to formally charge Mr. Trump with inciting violence against the country for his role in whipping up a mob of his supporters who stormed the Capitol while lawmakers met to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. In a sign that the dam could be breaking against Mr. Trump in a party that has long been unfailingly loyal to him, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the House, announced her intention to support the single charge of high crimes and misdemeanors, as other party leaders declined to formally lobby rank-and-file lawmakers to oppose it. “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” Ms. Cheney said in a statement. “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.” Even before Mr. McConnell’s position was known and Ms. Cheney had announced her plans, advisers to the Senate Republican leader had already privately speculated that a dozen Republican senators — and possibly more — could ultimately vote to convict Mr. Trump in a Senate trial that would follow his impeachment by the House. Seventeen Republicans would most likely be needed to join Democrats in finding him guilty. After that, it would take a simple majority to disqualify Mr. Trump from ever again holding public office.

Full Article: McConnell Privately Backs Impeachment as House Moves to Charge Trump – The New York Times

National: House Sets Impeachment Vote to Charge Trump With Incitement | Nicholas Fandos/The New York Times

House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump on Monday for his role in inflaming a mob that attacked the Capitol, scheduling a Wednesday vote to charge the president with “inciting violence against the government of the United States” if Vice President Mike Pence refused to strip him of power first. Moving with exceptional speed, top House leaders began summoning lawmakers still stunned by the attack back to Washington, promising the protection of National Guard troops and Federal Air Marshal escorts after last week’s stunning security failure. Their return set up a high-stakes 24-hour standoff between two branches of government. As the impeachment drive proceeded, federal law enforcement authorities accelerated efforts to fortify the Capitol ahead of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration on Jan. 20. The authorities announced plans to deploy up to 15,000 National Guard troops and set up a multilayered buffer zone with checkpoints around the building by Wednesday, just as lawmakers are to debate and vote on impeaching Mr. Trump. Federal authorities also said they were bracing for a wave of armed protests in all 50 state capitals and Washington in the days leading up to the inauguration. “I’m not afraid of taking the oath outside,” Mr. Biden said Monday, referring to a swearing-in scheduled to take place on a platform on the west side of the Capitol, in the very spot where rioters marauded last week, beating police officers and vandalizing the building.

Full Article: House Sets Impeachment Vote to Charge Trump With Incitement – The New York Times

Trump charged with impeachment count as FBI warns of armed protests | Tom McCarthy, David Smith and Lauren Gambino/The Guardian

Donald Trump is facing a historic second impeachment after Democrats in the House of Representatives formally charged him with one count of “incitement of insurrection” over the Capitol Hill riot. Five people died in the attack last week, including a police officer, which Trump prompted when he told supporters to “fight like hell” in his attempt to overturn election defeat by Joe Biden. Emerging video footage has revealed just how close the mob came to a potentially deadly confrontation with members of Congress. On Monday, security officials scrambled to ensure that Biden’s inauguration next week would not be marred by further violence. The US Secret Service will begin carrying out its special security arrangements for the inauguration this Wednesday, almost a week earlier than originally planned, although on Monday afternoon the acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, abruptly resigned, just days after calling the Capitol invasion “sickening”. Earlier, ABC News said it had obtained an internal FBI bulletin which detailed plans for “armed protests” and calls for the “storming” of state, local and federal courthouses and buildings across the country if Trump was removed from power before then. On Capitol Hill, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Monday that she would move forward with impeaching Trump if Vice-President Mike Pence did not remove him from office under the 25th amendment to the US constitution. “The president’s threat to America is urgent, and so too will be our action,” she said in a statement.

Full Article: Trump charged with impeachment count as FBI warns of armed protests | US news | The Guardian

National: Supreme Court won’t fast-track Trump challenges to election results | Robert Barnes/The Washington Post

As expected, the Supreme Court refused Monday to fast-track a batch of challenges to the presidential election filed by President Trump and his allies. The rejections came without comment or noted dissent and were formal notifications of what already had become clear. Some of the petitions asking for the court to move quickly were filed in early December, and the court had not even called for responses from officials in the states where the results were challenged. President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in Jan, 20, and the cases presumably will become moot after that. Among the cases the court declined to expedite were Trump v. Biden and Trump v. Boockvar, which challenged the results in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, respectively. Other cases filed by Trump allies objected to the outcomes in Michigan and Georgia. The Supreme Court has uniformly rejected challenges to the election results. On Dec. 11, it dismissed a bid by Trump and the state of Texas to overturn the results in those four battleground states won by Biden, blocking the president’s legal path to reverse his reelection loss. The court’s unsigned order was short, and it denied Texas’s request to sue the states over how they conducted their elections. Texas has not shown it has a legal interest “in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the order said. It dismissed all pending motions about the case.

Full Article: Supreme Court won’t fast-track Trump challenges to election results – The Washington Post