Senator: State election systems targeted
Warner: Russian effort broader than previously reported
USA TODAY WASHINGTON The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee told USA TODAY on Tuesday that Russian attacks on election systems were broader and targeted more states than those detailed in an explosive intelligence report leaked to the website The Intercept.
“I don’t believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview. “But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far.”
He said he was pushing intelligence agencies to declassify the names and number of states hit to help put electoral systems on notice before midterm voting in 2018.
“None of these actions from the Russians stopped on Election Day,” he warned.
The National Security Agency report said Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. supplier of voting software and sent deceptive emails to more than 100 local election officials in the days leading up to the election last November — a sign that Moscow’s hacking may have penetrated further into voting systems than previously known.
The Justice Department on Monday announced that Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old employee of a federal contractor in Georgia with a top-secret security clearance, had been charged with leaking classified information to an online media outlet.
The law office for Winner’s lawyer, Titus Thomas Nichols, said she didn’t enter a plea at her initial appearance Monday and faces a detention hearing Thursday.
On Monday, The Intercept published the NSA document detailing the Russian involvement. Court documents outlining the charges against Winner did not specifically cite the NSA report that had been posted on the website.
“Whoever’s the leaker should be pursued to the full extent of the law,” Warner said.
The two-term senator and former Virginia governor, 62, said most of the states involved now are aware they had been targeted by the Russian cyberattacks.
Warner said, “If we don’t get ahead of this, this same kind of intervention could take place in 2018 and definitely will take place in 2020.”