Homeland Security Chief: No, The Russians Didn’t Hack The Vote

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson put to rest this week a conspiracy theory promoted by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and others trying to come up with any reason other than the democratic process that former reality TV star Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. On Tuesday, Johnson said that after a review by his department, they determined there is “no evidence” that anyone hacked into voting systems and changed any ballot counts.

Johnson’s unequivocal comment came during a Washington Post Live event on Tuesday. Following a review ordered by President Obama of possible hacking or other influence by Russians agents, Johnson said they came up with nothing that showed any hacking of ballot counts. The moment was noticed by PJ Media’s Nicholas Ballasy, who provides some of the transcript of Johnson’s comments (video below):

“I think it’s important to note that on election night we had our guard up for this,” said Johnson. “We had our crisis action team ready on election night. We did not see anything that amounted to altering ballot counts or degrading the ability to report election results, nothing out of the ordinary. There’s always a certain amount of noise that goes on there but on election night itself, we didn’t see anything that affected the ballot count.”

Showing how far the left-wing media has bought into the Russian conspiracy theory, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius pressed Johnson on the issue, asking him if he could assure Americans that the Russians really didn’t hack the election.

“We see no evidence that hacking by any actor altered the ballot count or any cyber actions that deprived people of voting,” Johnson reiterated, adding, “Whether the disclosures that we made that we pointed out in our Oct. 7th statement altered public opinion, that’s beyond my level of expertise.”

Johnson was referencing a joint statement issued by DHS and the Director of National Intelligence in October stating they were “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”

Though they found no evidence that any of the vote count was altered by Russian agents, Johnson said DHS is continuing its review of Russian influence on the election, which it plans to complete before Obama’s tenure ends.

Meanwhile, the Russians deny any wrongdoing. This week, Putin ratcheted up the defense by challenging the Obama administration to prove their involvement in any of the hacking incidents. But as Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro notes, if Putin and Russia are good at anything, it’s lying:

…Putin has a long record of lying blatantly about his nefarious activities. In 2012, Russia denied that a spy ring allegedly working for Russia was working for Russia. In May 2015, for example, as Russian troops motored into Ukraine, the government denied that its troops were in Ukraine at all – even as the Russian government issued an order covering up all deaths of Russian troops in the country. In October 2015, the Russian government denied that it or pro-Russian separatists had anything to do with the shooting down of MH17 – and Trump naturally bought Putin’s explanation, stating, “Putin and Russia say they didn’t do it, the other side said they did, no one really knows who did it, probably Putin knows who did it, possibly it was Russia but they are totally denying it.” Last month, Russia denied reports of an air offensive in Aleppo – even though human rights groups reported the airstrikes.

Russia, in other words, lies all the time. It’s a dictatorship run by a former KGB operative.

Below is video of Johnson discussing the investigation into Russia’s influence on the election (via Ballasy):