Congress hears details of Russia's election meddling

Jeh Johnson, who was USA secretary of Homeland Security during the November election, testified.

"I am not in a position to know whether the successful Russian government-directed hacks of the DNC and elsewhere did in fact alter public opinion and thereby alter the outcome of the presidential election", Johnson said in prepared testimony.

Jeh Johnson, who led the Homeland Security Department until the end of the Obama administration, added that his department had issued warnings about hacking into voter registration databases. Trump acknowledged on Friday he was under investigation in the probe of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 race and possible collusion by his campaign, and seemed to assail the Justice Department official overseeing the inquiry. He said he wasn't aware of efforts by Trump or his campaign to collude with Russian Federation beyond what the intelligence community already knows.

FBI Counterintelligence Division Assistant Director Bill Priestap laid out in his opening statements what Russia's end game was: power.

The testimony came during a morning of double-barreled intelligence committee hearings - one in the House and one in the Senate - that underscored the USA intelligence community's months-old determination that Russian Federation attempted to meddle in the election.

"Based on everything I know, that is correct", Johnson told Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, "I know of no evidence that, through cyber-intrusions, votes were altered or suppressed in some way". The document laid out the NSA's account of Russian cyberattacks against a company that supplies voting software and more than 100 local election officials.

"As of right now, we have evidence that election-related systems in 21 states were targeted", acting deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity for the Homeland Security Department Jeanette Manfra said.

Johnson also took heat from Democrats, angry that former President Barack Obama did not more forcefully announce Russia's meddling in the election in the midst of the election itself.

During the hearing's second panel, election officials from IN and Wisconsin said they hadn't received notices that their election databases had been compromised.

Former Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson says it would have been "unforgiveable" not to alert the American public ahead of the 2016 election that the Russians hacked Democratic email systems.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia says DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have confirmed intrusions into voter registration databases in Arizona and IL.

Johnson said, however, that if he were to do it over again, he would have "camped out" in front of the DNC's headquarters.

He said he and his team spent 10 years researching cyber vulnerabilities of election equipment.

An intelligence report released in January concluded that "Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election" and acted "to undermine public faith in the USA democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency".

"One of the candidates, as you'll recall, was predicting that the election was going to be rigged in some way". "I pressed my staff to know whether DHS was sufficiently proactive, and on the scene helping the DNC identify the intruders and patch vulnerabilities".

He said he considered having elections systems designated as "critical infrastructure", a classification that would allow for the same cybersecurity protections available to the financial services and transportation sectors.

"If they had never cranked up the volume, is it fair to say you would have never discovered it?" Sen.

"My conclusion from that work is that our highly computerized election infrastructure is vulnerable to sabotage, and even to cyberattacks that could change votes", he warned. "Those who expressed negative views stated that running elections in this country was the sovereign and exclusive responsibility of the states, and they did not want federal intrusion, a federal takeover, or federal regulation of that process". But Johnson and the DHS could not get anyone to pay attention since "the press and voters were focused on a lot of other things" a year ago. Polling and vote tabulation locations, among other facilities, would receive prioritized cybersecurity assistance, he wrote in a January 6 statement. Republican Senator Susan Collins of ME also noted that no secretary of state has yet been given a security clearance to get classified information from the federal government.