“I know of no evidence that through cyberintrusions votes were altered or suppressed in some way,” said former Director of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson on Wednesday during testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.
Johnson was asked by Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) if alleged Russian interference in 2016’s presidential election — per the “election hacking” narrative pushed by Democrats, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets — had compromised the apparatus of voter registration or vote counting.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) also asked about alleged Russian manipulation of voter tallies or cote counting.
Partial transcript below:
CONAWAY: You said in your opening statement — in your prepared remarks — that to your knowledge, there was no vote tallying changes, that no one’s vote [was falsely recorded], is that still your opinion with respect to the 2016 election, that the [Russian] intrusions, whatever the Russians or others did, did not affect the actual voting itself?
JOHNSON: Based on everything I know, that is correct.
…
GOWDY: You have seen no evidence that the Russians were successful at changing voter tallies or voter totals?
JOHNSON: Correct.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) suggested that Hillary Clinton would have been elected president had it not been for alleged Russian political interference. Both he and Johnson claimed, without evidence, that the Russian government had “hacked” the Democratic National Committee’s email records and subsequently leaked them to WikiLeaks for the purpose of offering political advantage to Donald Trump during last year’s presidential election season.
“In 2016, the Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election. That is a fact, plain and simple,” said Johnson during his opening remarks. Revealing evidence of these claims, he added, would compromise “sources and methods” of the federal government’s intelligence apparatus.
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