A Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Americans need “to be very aware that the Russians are trying to interfere in our election” any way they can “regardless of who the candidate is.”
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford told ABC News "This Week" Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz that Russia's aim is to disrupt American elections, including in the upcoming 2018 midterms.
Raddatz asked the senator about a report that first appeared in The Daily Beast that the Russian intelligence agency targeted Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri as she began her 2018 re-election campaign. There is no evidence that the hacking attempt was successful.
Lankford said one side of the Russian cyberattack on U.S. elections is to spread misinformation, and another side is "hacking into computers as they did for the [Democratic National Committee in 2016], hacking into state election systems ... So for Americans, they’ve got to be able to pay attention to what information’s coming in front of them."
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign in an attempt to help President Trump.
But Lankford said Russia aims to upend the U.S. electoral system generally, not to attack particular candidates.
“The Russians are trying to interfere with everyone's election, and that's the part that we lose track of,” the Oklahoma Republican said. “To them, sowing chaos and sowing uncertainty within our democracy is their key goal.”
McCaskill said in a statement last week that she “would not be intimidated” by Russia.
“Russia continues to engage in cyberwarfare against our democracy. I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable. While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this,” the senator's statement said.
On “This Week,” Lankford said that both the Russian misinformation campaigns and the hacking attempts “are actively still at work, so for Americans, they've got to be able to pay attention to what information is coming in front of them.”
Niloofar Razi Howe, a cybersecurity expert who was also interviewed on “This Week” Sunday, told Raddatz that the election systems are better secured now than they were in 2016, but cautioned that the U.S. is still “unprepared for” this misinformation campaign by the Russians.
“The thing we're unprepared for is the influence campaign that Russia has undertaken, the attempt to undermine our democracy, to undermine our power, to turn Americans against themselves and against their institutions,” Howe said. “That's the long play that they're going for, so I think we can be somewhat confident that the election itself is protected. We ought to be concerned about the long-term strategic goals that the Russians have.”
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump tweeted that he’s “very concerned” about Russian interference in the midterms elections, but said that Russia “will be pushing very hard for the Democrats.”
“Do you have any evidence that that is true?” Raddatz asked Lankford on “This Week.”
Lankford said, “No.”
“They've done this in other countries. Now they're doing it to us as well. We should respond with sanctions. We should try to push back and also understand they're going to go after every candidate through the process,” Lankford concluded.
Lankford said the U.S. has to “be very aware that the Russians are trying to be able to interfere in our elections every other way they can to be able to harvest information and then to be able to use that against our democracy.”
“That demands sanctions, that demands immediate response from our government. This is regardless of who the candidate is or what the background is, we as Americans universally should push back against a foreign power trying to interfere in our system,” he said.
from ABC News: Politics https://ift.tt/2LVuUqc
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