Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Russia hacking testimony ‘wrong’
Wasserman Schultz disputes account of 2016 emails breach
A new round of heated disagreements has erupted about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, almost a year after leaked emails rocked the presidential campaign, upended political careers and led to the resignation of South Florida’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz as national party chairwoman.
On Thursday, Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman from Broward and Miami-Dade counties, tore into former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s congressional testimony about the Russian hacking of the party’s computer system.
“He’s wrong in every respect,” Wasserman Schultz said
in an interview on CNN. She said Johnson “is utterly misinformed” and the version of events he provided is “simply not accurate.”
On Wednesday, Johnson appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, testifying that the DNC didn’t accept help from his agency after its email systems were hacked.
“The response I got was, the FBI had spoken to them. They don’t want our help. They have CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm,” Johnson said. “I recall very clearly that I was not pleased that we were not in there helping them patch this vulnerability.”
Johnson, who served as homeland security secretary from 2013 to 2017, was appointed to his post by former President Barack Obama. Wasserman Schultz was Obama’s handpicked DNC leader from 2011 to 2016.
She resigned last summer, before the expiration of her term as party chairwoman, after WikiLeaks posted internal DNC emails. U.S. intelligence agencies determined that the party was hacked in 2015 and 2016 by the Russians.
The leaked emails showed that some national party staffers had favored Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton during the primaries for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. For months, Sanders supporters had complained Wasserman Schultz had been tipping the scales toward Clinton, something she denied. Her resignation, just as the party’s nominating convention got underway, was aimed at breaching differences between Sanders and Clinton camps.
The House Intelligence Committee, controlled by the Republican majority, called Johnson to testify about the Russians’ hacking and the U.S. response.
The former secretary said the party did not accept help from his agency. “Hindsight is 20⁄20,” Johnson said. “In retrospect, it would have been easy for me to say that I should have brought a sleeping bag and camped out in front of the DNC in late summer.”
Wasserman Schultz disputed Johnson’s version of events.
“He’s wrong in every respect. Let me just be very clear: At no point during my tenure at the DNC was I contacted by the FBI, DHS or any government agency or alerted or made aware that they believed that the Russians, an enemy state, was intruding on our network. At no point. And I am a member of Congress, who had the ability to sit down and be briefed in a classified setting.”
Wassermann Schultz said it was “astounding” that the federal agencies, upon discovering the intrusion on the Democrats’ computer network, did not “do anything other than lob a phone call into our tech support through our main switchboard.”
Pressed on CNN about Johnson’s testimony that the DNC rebuffed attempts to help, she said. “Respectfully, Secretary Johnson is utterly misinformed. And it’s simply not accurate . ... The FBI and other federal agencies did virtually nothing to make sure that when they were aware at the point that they were aware that there was a concern that there was an intrusion on our network by the Russians that they did virtually nothing to sound the alarm bells to make us aware of that. And they left, essentially, the Russians on our network for more than, for almost a year before we discovered that they were there.”
“How is it that the FBI or DHS or any federal agency that was concerned about a foreign enemy state intruding on the networks of one of the two major political parties did not think it important enough to go higher than a tech support staffer?” she said. “It is astounding and outrageous.”
President Donald Trump weighed in Thursday with two tweets on the subject.
“Why did Democratic National Committee turn down the DHS offer to protect against hacks (long prior to election). It’s all a big Dem HOAX!” he wrote. “Why did the DNC REFUSE to turn over its Server to the FBI, and still hasn’t? It’s all a big Dem scam and excuse for losing the election!”
U.S. intelligence agencies said there was a broad based Russian effort to influence the U.S. election. Trump’s campaign is being investigated by a special counsel for possible collusion with the Russians over its attempts to influence the election. Trump said in an interview that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of the Russia investigation.
The aftermath of the element of the Russian meddling that involved the DNC hacking became the biggest controversy of Wasserman Schultz’s 25 years in public office.
Between her late-July resignation as DNC chairwoman and the late-August Florida congressional primaries, her Democratic challenger, Tim Canova, hammered Wasserman Schultz’s stewardship of the party. She defeated him, with 57 percent to 43 percent of the vote. Canova said last week that he will challenge Wasserman Schultz in 2018.