[Senate Hearing 116-405]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-405
EXAMINING IRREGULARITIES IN THE
2020 ELECTION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 16, 2020
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
43-071 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
RAND PAUL, Kentucky THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire
MITT ROMNEY, Utah KAMALA D. HARRIS, California
RICK SCOTT, Florida KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
Gabrielle D'Adamo Singer, Staff Director
Joseph C. Folio III, Chief Counsel
Brian M. Downey, Senior Investigator
Scott D. Wittmann, Senior Professional Staff Member
David M. Weinberg, Minority Staff Director
Zachary I. Schram, Minority Chief Counsel
Alexa E. Noruk, Minority Director of Homeland Security
Alan Kahn, Minority Chief Investigative Counsel
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Thomas J. Spino, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Johnson.............................................. 1
Senator Peters............................................... 5
Senator Paul................................................. 25
Senator Carper............................................... 27
Senator Lankford............................................. 30
Senator Hassan............................................... 33
Senator Rosen................................................ 36
Senator Scott................................................ 41
Senator Portman.............................................. 43
Senator Hawley............................................... 47
Senator Sinema............................................... 50
Prepared statements:
Senator Johnson.............................................. 67
Senator Peters............................................... 71
WITNESSES
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Hon. Kenneth W. Starr, Testifying in His Personal Capacity....... 8
Hon. Donald Palmer, Commissioner, U.S. Election Assistance
Commission..................................................... 10
James R. Troupis, Attorney, Troupis Law Firm..................... 12
Hon. Francis X. Ryan, State Representative, Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania................................................... 14
Jesse Binnall, Partner, Harvey & Binnall, PLLC................... 16
Hon. Christopher C. Krebs, Former Director (2018-20)
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security................................ 18
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Binnall, Jesse:
Testimony.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 88
Krebs, Hon. Christopher C.:
Testimony.................................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 90
Palmer, Hon. Donald:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 78
Ryan, Hon. Francis X.:
Testimony.................................................... 14
Prepared statement........................................... 86
Starr, Hon. Kenneth W.:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 74
Troupis, James R.:
Testimony.................................................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 81
APPENDIX
Senator Peters letter to Senator Johnson......................... 101
Statements submitted for the Record from Senator Johnson......... 105
Statements submitted for the Record from Senator Peters.......... 145
EXAMINING IRREGULARITIES IN THE
2020 ELECTION
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2020
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, and via Webex,
Hon. Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Paul, Lankford, Scott,
Hawley, Peters, Carper, Hassan, Sinema, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON\1\
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. This hearing is called to
order. I want to welcome and thank the witnesses for your time
and your testimony.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 67.
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Let me start the hearing by saying this hearing should not
be controversial. It really should not be. This is something I
think we all should want to restore the confidence in our
election system.
A week ago, when I gave notice of this hearing, there were
more standing issues and court cases than there are today. But
even though courts have handed down decisions and the Electoral
College has awarded Joe Biden 306 electoral votes, a large
percentage of the American public does not believe the November
election results are legitimate. This is not a sustainable
state of affairs in our democratic republic.
There are many reasons for this high level of skepticism.
It starts with today's climate of hyper-partisanship, which is
only exacerbated by the persistent efforts to delegitimize the
results of the 2016 election. The corrupt investigation and
media coverage of the Russian collusion hoax reduced faith in
our institutions, and the ongoing suppression and censorship of
the conservative perspective by biased media and social media
adds fuel to the flames.
Senator Grassley's and my investigation and report on the
conflicts of interest and foreign financial entanglements of
the Biden family is just one example of how media suppression
can and does affect the outcome of an election. It is both
amazing and galling that all of a sudden post-election this has
become a news story and a scandal worthy of investigation.
With less than a month left in my chairmanship of this
Committee, the examination of irregularities in the 2020
election will obviously be my last investigation and last
hearing as Chairman. But oversight into election security
should continue into the next Congress because we must restore
confidence in the integrity of our voting system.
As I said at the start, this effort should be bipartisan.
In my statement announcing this hearing, I stated its goal was
to ``resolve suspicions with full transparency and public
awareness.'' What is wrong with that? That is what good
oversight can accomplish.
Unfortunately, Senators Schumer and Peters ignored my
statement and instead chose to politically attack me and this
hearing. As I commented in last Thursday's hearing on early
treatment of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), close-mindedness
is a root cause of many problems we face.
Just a quick aside about that hearing held 7 days ago. It
was attacked, unfortunately boycotted by Democrat Members of
this Committee except for a rather politically charged opening
statement by Senator Peters. Two of those witnesses, two of
those doctors who had the courage to treat COVID patients, I
think one of them told the Committee they are Democrats, and
they were very disappointed by that boycotting by Democrats,
that close-mindedness, that politically charged opening
statement. But to prove the worthiness and the value of that
hearing, Dr. Kory, one of those Democrats, a person who showed
immense courage in treating successfully COVID patients, his
10-minute opening statement has received more than 4.4 million
views in just the last 7 or 8 days. Obviously, Americans need
that information. They have the right to know about early
treatment, and they have the right to try early treatment.
My last pitch before I return to this hearing, if you or
somebody you know gets COVID, seek a doctor. Again, you need
doctor participation in this, but find a doctor who will at
least consider and talk to you about early treatment.
On with this hearing. In preparation for this hearing, I
asked my staff to find out as much as they could about basic
election mechanics, controls, and data flow. Much of the
suspicion comes from a lack of understanding how everything
works and how much variety there is in the way each precinct,
county, and State conducts their elections. Even though
decentralization makes it more difficult to understand the full
process, it also dramatically enhances the security of our
national elections.
In addition to the witnesses testifying today, we spoke to
State and local officials as well as suppliers of election
machinery, equipment, and data. I believe the alleged
irregularities can be organized into three basic categories:
one, lax enforcement or violations of election laws and
controls; two, allegations of fraudulent votes and ballot
stuffing; and, three, corruption of voting machines and
software that might be programmed to add or switch votes.
In the time we had, it was impossible to fully identify and
examine every allegation. But many of these irregularities
raise legitimate concerns, and they do need to be taken
seriously.
Here is a brief summary of what we did learn, and a lot of
this should provide the American public comfort in the
integrity of our election system.
First, multiple controls do exist to help ensure election
integrity. Voter registration rules and election logs for both
in-person and absentee vote balloting are used to verify
eligible voters and help prevent fraudulent voting. But it is
not a perfect system, as we will hear in testimony today.
We have increased the percentage of votes using paper
ballots from 82 percent in 2016 to 95 percent in 2020, and a
lot of that had to do with the efforts of Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Chris Krebs,
recognizing that was a vulnerability in our system, not having
that audit trail. So this is a significant improvement in
providing a backup audit trail, but only if full or
statistically valid recounts occur. Optical scanners, ballot
marking machines, and tabulators should not be connected to the
Internet during voting. But we found some do have the
capability of being connected, and there are allegations that
some were.
Once voting ends, those machines print out a paper report
and also transmit voting data in digital form in two separate
data streams, from precinct to the county level and then the
State level.
The first data stream--this is the official stream--is sent
to the official State election management systems, and the
second, unofficial stream is to the unofficial media reporting
system through companies like Edison Research and the
Associated Press (AP). There is no uniform method of
transmission. It is not fully automated, and thousands of human
beings are involved in the process, so human error does occur.
But that is what paper backups and post-election canvassing is
designed to catch.
Today we will hear testimony on how election laws in some
cases were not enforced and how fraudulent voting did occur, as
it always does. The question that follows is whether the level
of fraud would alter the outcome of the election. This year, in
dozens of court cases through the certification process in each
State and by the Electoral College votes, the conclusion has
collectively been reached that it would not. However, lax
enforcement, denying effective bipartisan observation of the
complete election process, and failure to be fully transparent
or conduct reasonable audits has led to heightened suspicion.
The most difficult allegations to assess involve
vulnerabilities in voting machines and the software used. In
order to effectively determine the extent to which voting
machines were subject to nefarious intrusion or other
vulnerabilities, computer science experts must be given the
opportunity to examine these allegations. This is a complex
issue that has been under congressional scrutiny for years.
Since 2018, I am aware of three oversight letters
requesting information from the main suppliers of voting
machines. This oversight is focused on Election Systems &
Software LLC, Dominion Voting Systems Inc., and Hart
InterCivic, Inc. Today we have a witness from the Election
Assistance Commission (EAC), which certifies voting machines,
to describe what has been done and what more can be done to
address any vulnerabilities.
On March 7, 2018, it was reported that Senator Klobuchar
and Senator Shaheen asked, ``major vendors of U.S. voting
equipment whether they had allowed Russian entities to
scrutinize their software, saying the practice could allow
Moscow to hack into American election infrastructure.'' Then
last year, on March 26, 2019, Senators Klobuchar, Warner, Reed,
and Ranking Member Peters wrote, ``The integrity of our
elections remains under serious threat. Our Nation's
intelligence agencies continue to raise the alarm that foreign
adversaries are actively trying to undermine our system of
democracy, and will target the 2020 elections as they did the
2016 and 2018 elections. . . . a combination of older legacy
machines and newer systems, vulnerabilities in each present a
problem for the security of our democracy and they must be
addressed.''
On December 6, 2019, Senators Warren, Klobuchar, Wyden, and
Congressman Pocan wrote, ``We are particularly concerned that
secretive and `trouble-plagued companies,' owned by private
equity firms and responsible for manufacturing and maintaining
voting machines and other election administration equipment,
`have long skimped on security in favor of convenience,'
leaving voting systems across the country `prone to security
problems.'"
Again, this is a quote from that letter: ``Moreover, even
when State and local officials work on replacing antiquated
machines, many continue to `run on old software that will soon
be outdated and more vulnerable to hackers.' ''
The letter continues: ``In 2018 alone, `voters in South
Carolina [were] reporting machines that switched their votes
after they had inputted them.'' Scanners were rejecting paper
ballots in Missouri, and busted machines were causing long
lines in Indiana. ``In addition,'' these Senators write,
``researchers recently uncovered previously undisclosed
vulnerabilities in `nearly three dozen backend election systems
in 10 States.' Just this year, after the Democratic candidate's
electronic tally showed he received an improbable 164 votes out
of 55,000 cast in a Pennsylvania State judicial election in
2019, the county's Republican Chairwoman said, `nothing went
right on Election Day. Everything went wrong. That is a
problem.' These problems threaten the integrity of our
elections.''
Now, again, those were three letters from Democrat Members
of Congress. Now, maybe I missed it, but I do not recall the
media or anyone else accusing these eight congressional
Democrats of indulging in ``quackery and conspiracy theories''
or their letters of being a ``ridiculous charade,'' as Senator
Schumer did when he used those exact same words attacking me
and this hearing on the Senate floor.
The fact that our last two Presidential elections have not
been accepted as legitimate by large percentages of the
American public is a serious problem that threatens our
republic. I do not say that lightly. This hearing is part of
what should be ongoing congressional oversight that is meant to
transparently address that serious problem.
Before I turn it over to Senator Peters, I do want to
remark this is my last hearing as Chairman. I want to express
the fact that I think it has been an honor and privilege to
serve. I think our track record--even though a couple of the
last hearings and some of these investigations have grown to be
a little rancorous, I regret that. I think we really have an
excellent track record of achievement, over 100 bills passed
and signed into law in this Committee, 200 others passed by the
Committee maybe not signed into law, but they can act as a
foundation for future legislation.
Again, I just want to thank everybody for working together,
and staff. It really has been an honor and privilege. Looking
ahead, I want to acknowledge that Senator Carper had a very
kind phone call to me just an hour ago. We will probably be
working in some capacity as Chairman and Ranking Member in the
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), and I look
forward to trying to find those areas of agreement of things we
can look into together to give the American people the
information they need to know as it relates to government and
other issues. So, Senator Carper, thanks for calling.
With that, I will turn it over to Senator Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\1\
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to our
witnesses for being here today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appear in the Appendix
on page 71.
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Mr. Chairman, if we have learned anything over the past 2
years, it is that we cannot take our democracy for granted. Our
institutions and our democratic norms have been under assault,
and when elected leaders fail to stand up to protect them, we
just see how quickly things can erode.
For generations, Americans have been a shining example for
budding democracies around the world. We have shown the world
that strong governments and free societies can thrive when
political power is entrusted to the people. We have
demonstrated that the will of the people is above any one
individual, and when voters choose their new leaders, power can
be transferred peacefully.
The President and many of his supporters are unfortunately
continuing their efforts to undermine the will of the people,
disenfranchise voters, and sow the seeds of mistrust and
discontent to further their partisan desire for power. Whether
intended or not, this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy
theories and lies, and it is a destructive exercise that has no
place in the U.S. Senate.
Joe Biden won the election more than 5 weeks ago with 306
electoral votes and received the most popular votes for a
Presidential candidate in American history. All 50 States and
the District of Columbia have certified those results. The
Electoral College met Monday, and all affirmed that Joe Biden
will be the President on January 20, 2021.
It is a result that the majority of the American people
recognize along with the leaders of more than 150 countries
around the world. Yet, even after all of that, significant
numbers of Republican elected officials have been slow to
publicly acknowledge that Joe Biden will be the next President
of the United States.
I appreciate that yesterday several of my Republican
colleagues made their first public comments acknowledging this
fact, and I appreciate that even the Chairman's rhetoric around
this election has evolved over the last 24 hours.
But let me be clear. Deciding to move forward with this
hearing is still dangerous. Elected leaders who are chosen by
the voters to help uphold our institutions and democratic
values spent weeks either turning a blind eye or parroting
provocative rhetoric and false claims about this election. By
not speaking out earlier, even though they knew it was wrong,
that there was no evidence to support these claims and that
this inflammatory rhetoric is harmful to our democracy, many
elected officials gave the President and his supporters license
to spread damaging lies about the election.
We have known for weeks that there was no widespread voter
fraud, a fact that President Trump's own Department of Justice
(DOJ) has confirmed. There was no election interference, and
the election was not rigged. In fact, independent election
security officials in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
have called this election ``the most secure in American
history.'' We are going to hear directly from the former
Director of CISA who will testify today about that fact.
In the face of intimidation from the President and his
supporters, including threats of violence and even death,
election officials in States across the country certified their
results as accurate. More than 50 post-election lawsuits file
by the Trump campaign have been dismissed or withdrawn,
including by the United States Supreme Court, because there is
simply no evidence to support these claims in a court of law.
Despite the title of today's hearing, there were no widespread
election irregularities that affected the final outcome. These
claims are false, and giving them more oxygen is a grave threat
to the future of our democracy.
Now, I understand the Chairman's desire to ensure our
elections run smoothly, and I agree that we need to restore
faith and trust in our election process. But I am concerned
that today's hearing will do more harm than good by confusing a
few anecdotes about human error with the insidious claims the
President has aired.
Mistakes do happen in elections, but there is a difference
between a clerk making an error that gets caught and corrected
during routine audits and calling the entire election
fraudulent or stolen when there is no evidence just because you
do not like the outcome.
Amplifying these obviously false narratives about fraud or
irregularities corrodes public trust. It threatens national
security, and it weakens our democracy and our standing around
the world. Every time the President or his followers make these
false claims, they destabilize our relationships with our
allies and allow authoritarian adversaries to undercut American
democratic leadership around the globe.
Democracy and a free society are not guaranteed. We have
seen democracies around the world crumble because of similar
words and actions. When executives abuse their power, when
political leaders work to stifle the free press, and when they
delegitimize the principle of one person, one vote, it puts our
country on a dangerous path toward authoritarianism.
I have faith that our democracy is strong and that it can
withstand these attacks, but we need all of our leaders to
speak up and condemn this harmful rhetoric. Preserving our
democracy takes hard work, and I am deeply troubled that we are
at the edge of a crisis point.
Now is the time for American patriots who love this country
to say, ``Enough is enough.'' Now is the time for patriots to
put our Nation's founding ideals first during a time when
American democracy needs the strongest defense that we can
give.
Mr. Chairman, to date the Trump campaign has filed about 60
legal challenges to the election in 8 States across this
country. I ask that this document highlighting those cases and
their failed attempts be entered into the record without
objection.\1\
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\1\ The document referenced by Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 145.
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Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
Senator Peters. I would also like to include in the record
a non-exhaustive list of incidents of violence\2\ aimed at
election officials as well as a statement from our Nation's top
law enforcement associations condemning the threats of
violence, harassment, and intimidation leveled at election
official across the country since election day.\3\ I move
without objection.
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\2\ The document referenced by Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 290.
\3\ The statement referenced by Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 288.
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Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
Senator Peters. I also will ask that op-eds from our
Nation's foremost voices on election integrity, democratic
institutions, and national security, including Madeleine
Albright, Michael Chertoff, Ben Ginsberg, and Steven Brill, be
entered into the record, without objection.\4\
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\4\ The statement referenced by Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 272.
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Chairman Johnson. Without objection, because I am not
afraid of information, but go ahead.
Senator Peters. That is great.
Last, I would like to enter into the record a statement
from Freedom House President Michael Abramowitz.\5\ Freedom
House is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to the
expansion of freedom and democracy across the world. Without
objection, Mr. Chairman.
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\5\ The statement referenced by Senator Peters appears in the
Appendix on page 286.
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Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Again, I do not see anything dangerous
about evaluating information, about doing legitimate
congressional oversight. Nothing dangerous about that
whatsoever. As I said in my last hearing, close-mindedness is a
real problem for a lot of the issues we face today.
I should have entered into the record the Reuters article
from March 7, 2018, describing the letter from Senators
Klobuchar and Shaheen.\6\
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\6\ The article referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 126.
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I will also enter into the record the March 27, 2019, press
release and letter from Senators Klobuchar, Warner, Reed, and
Peters, which let me just read a segment from that letter
again.\7\ This is Senator Peters joining in writing this
letter. ``The integrity of our elections remains under serious
threat. Our Nation's intelligence agencies continue to raise
the alarm that foreign adversaries are actively trying to
undermine our system of democracy, and will target the 2020
elections as they did the 2016 and 2018 elections. . . . a
combination of older legacy machines and newer systems,
vulnerabilities in each present a problem for the security of
our democracy and they must be addressed''--until, I guess,
right now let us move on, let us not worry about this, because
if we look at this, it is dangerous to our democracy.
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\7\ The letter referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 120.
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Also the December 6, 2019, letters written by Senators
Warren, Klobuchar, Wyden, and Congressman Pocan to those
equipment manufacturers.\1\
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\1\ The letter referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 105.
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I would also like to enter the responses from Dominion and
Hart to the March 27th letter, but the Ranking Member's staff
had an objection. Do you object to that, the responses? OK. So
we will enter those in the record.\2\
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\2\ The responses from Dominion and Hart referenced by Senator
Johnson appears in the Appendix on page 126.
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Finally, there is a really interesting article recently
written by Matt Taibbi who, again, I do not know his political
affiliation, seems to be a pretty straight-up reporter, the
things I read of him. But if I were to guess--and no offense,
Mr. Taibbi. I think he might be a little bit left of center.
But the title is, ``The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and
Will Backfire. Silicon Valley could not have designed a better
way to further radicalize Trump voters.'' The reason I want to
enter this article into the record,\3\ I really hope people
will read it because it really speaks to an awful lot that I
covered in my opening statement of why we are in this
unsustainable state of affairs in this country where, after
2016, 4 years of resistance, refusing to recognize the
legitimacy of that election, and here we are again. This is not
sustainable.
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\3\ The article referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 128.
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But, anyway, again, I want to welcome the witnesses. It is
the tradition of this Committee to swear in witnesses, so those
via Webex, if you will raise your right hand. You here in
person, please rise and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly
swear that the testimony you will give before this Committee
will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you, God?
Mr. Starr. I do.
Mr. Palmer. I do.
Mr. Troupis. I do.
Mr. Ryan. I do.
Mr. Binnall. I do.
Mr. Krebs. I do.
Our first witness is coming via Webex, Judge Ken Starr.
Judge Starr served as a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of
Appeals from 1983 to 1989. Mr. Starr has argued 36 cases before
the Supreme Court, including 25 cases during his service as
Solicitor General of the United States from 1989 to 1993. From
1994 to 1999, he was appointed to serve as Independent Counsel
for five investigations. Mr. Starr has had a distinguished
career in academia and continues to write articles and serve as
a guest commentator on a variety of media programs. Judge
Starr.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE KENNETH W. STARR,\4\ TESTIFYING IN
HIS PERSONAL CAPACITY
Mr. Starr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Peters and Members of the Committee. It is an honor to be with
you, even remotely.
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\4\ The prepared statement of Mr. Starr appears in the Appendix on
page 74.
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Over a century ago, the Supreme Court of the United States
wrote this: ``the right to vote is . . . a fundamental
political right . . . preservative of all rights.'' Over our
231 years as a constitutional democracy, the story of our
American experiment is in no small part a story of expansion
and inclusion. And that policy has been undergirded by a desire
to achieve human dignity and equality of all persons.
In the wake of the Civil War, very briefly, our
constitutional history in terms of amendments governing voting:
The 15th Amendment served as the capstone of the three post-
Civil War Amendments, which, taken together, abolished slavery;
guaranteed due process and equal protection to all persons; and
then expanding the right to participate to all persons.
With the franchise expanding came 100 years ago the
inclusion of women in 1920 as a Federal constitutional right,
the 19th Amendment; the elimination of financial impediments to
vote (the 24th Amendment in 1964); and finally, in the wake of
the Vietnam War, the expansion of the vote in Federal elections
to include 18-year-olds (the 26th Amendment in 1971). Of
course, along the way, Congress acted to foster the values of
the 15th Amendment through passage of the Voting Rights Act of
1965 with its extensions over time.
Now, underlying this story of ever-expanding voting rights
was an assumption, that is, one of integrity in the process.
Recall the scene in the wonderful movie ``Selma,'' as the
would-be voter, portrayed by Oprah Winfrey, was unconscionably
stymied in her effort simply to register to vote. Dishonesty
caused disenfranchisement and enormous moral outrage.
The flip side of racially motivated disenfranchisement is
the bedrock concept of treat everyone fairly and be honest in
the process. And this bears repeating. Honesty in the electoral
process is fundamental to the social bonds that unite us as a
free people, echoing the Chairman's opening statement.
Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court of the United States
has severely warned about the dangers and the corrosive effects
of dishonesty. Here is what a unanimous Supreme Court wrote in
2006: ``Confidence in the integrity of our electoral process is
essential to the functioning of our participatory democracy.''
The Court went on to say: ``Voter fraud drives honest citizens
out of the democratic process and breeds distrust of our form
of government.''
How do we achieve honesty and integrity in elections? It is
a challenge for the reason the Chairman suggested:
decentralization. We have national elections, but we do not
have a nationalized election with one set of rules. Indeed,
both Article I and Article II point out the approach of our
decentralized government, and that is, we look to the States
but specifically State legislatures--both Article I, Section 4
of the Constitution and Article II, Section 1, Clause 2.
And so as in much of life, the guardrails of integrity are
needed, and time and again, courts have warned--in the
strongest terms--that assuring honesty and integrity is a
compellingly important governmental interest. Justice Sandra
Day O'Connor, now retired, who herself had been elected to
State office in Arizona, specifically warned that judicial
intervention may be required in order to protect the integrity
of the election process.
As we will be exploring in this hearing, the Presidential
election of 2020, with its unprecedented feature of the use of
mail-in ballots, has given rise to a number of questions that
deserve to be answered.
Instead of pointing to examples such as in Pennsylvania
where there was a clear violation of the law and then the
statement of Justice Samuel Alito, since my time has now
expired, I want to close just by a reminder that in history
there was, in fact, a campaign, an illicit campaign, to deprive
Abraham Lincoln of the Presidency, and that was through the use
of mail-in ballots.
I think in the spirit of the Carter-Baker Commission, it is
wise for us, since the warning that they had with respect to
mail-in ballots, to pause and reflect on how we can, in fact,
better assure that bedrock factor and feature of integrity in
the election process.
I thank the Chairman and I thank the Committee. I look
forward to your questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Judge Starr.
Our next witness is Commissioner Donald Palmer.
Commissioner Palmer was confirmed to the Election Assistance
Commission in January 2019. Mr. Palmer is the former Secretary
of the Virginia State Board of Elections and served as
Virginia's chief election official from 2011 to 2014. He also
served as an intelligence officer and a judge advocate general.
Commissioner Palmer.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE DONALD PALMER,\1\ COMMISSIONER, U.S.
ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION
Mr. Palmer. Good morning, Chairman Johnson and Members of
the Committee, and Ranking Member. I am thankful for the
opportunity to testify before you this morning on the 2020
general election and the efforts of the Election Assistance
Commission to secure the Nation's voting systems. Election
officials, the Commissioners, and the staff of the EAC have a
duty to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the voting systems
used throughout the Nation. Our mission is to support the chief
election officials, the directors of elections, and
administrators in all localities across the country.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Palmer appears in the Appendix on
page 78.
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As the only Federal agency completely dedicated to election
administration, the EAC is charged with facilitating secure,
lawful, and accessible elections. Under the Help America Vote
Act (HAVA), the EAC is focused on assisting State and local
election officials. We are a bipartisan agency that recognizes
the authority of States to conduct Federal elections, and that
is a cornerstone of our representative democracy.
The 2020 general election has underscored the vital
importance of comprehensive oversight of voting technology and
the companies who manufacture these systems. That oversight is
an overlapping process of voluntary Federal standards, State
certification or approval, and local logic and accuracy testing
prior to each election.
We work to bolster confidence in democracy by adopting
voluntary voting system guidelines periodically. We test voting
systems, we accredit test laboratories, and serve as a national
clearinghouse of information on election administration.
Let me be clear. The EAC has confidence in the voting
systems we certify and in the State and local election
administrators who ran the election; first and foremost, that
is due to the process the voting system manufacturers must
undergo to receive Federal certification.
Before voting machines and election management systems are
used in elections, the systems undergo rigorous hardware and
software testing by laboratories accredited by the EAC and the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). There
are currently two accredited voting system laboratories: Pro
Verification and Validation (Pro V&V) and SLI.
Currently, the EAC's quality monitoring program includes
auditing voting system test laboratories and manufacturing
facilities, conducting field reviews of EAC-certified voting
systems, and gathering information on voting system anomalies
on EAC-certified voting systems. I strongly support additional
auditing, additional field reviews, and resolutions of any
anomalies discovered.
To apply for EAC certification of a voting system, a
company must first apply to register with the agency as a
registered manufacturer. Registration requires manufacturers to
provide details on their ownership structure, names of officers
and members of the board of directors and any individual or
organization with a controlling interest in the company.
Additionally, a list of all manufacturing or assembly
facilities used by the manufacturer and the name and contact
information of the person at each facility responsible for
quality management must be provided.
There are currently eight active manufacturers registered
with the EAC's testing program. Please note, it is not a
requirement to be an EAC-registered manufacturer to develop and
sell voting systems to election jurisdictions in the United
States. It is a voluntary program. Joining the program requires
that manufacturers voluntarily agree to the program's
requirements as outlined in the program manual.
Requirements include complying with all EAC inquiries and
investigations into the usage and status of fielded EAC-
certified voting systems. Under our quality monitoring program,
these investigations may arise due to technical failures
experienced in the field by election administrators,
misrepresentations made in regard to the certification status
of a voting system, and any deviations in quality in regard to
those systems submitted to testing versus what is actually
fielded.
The EAC staffed an election day war room to gather
information on issues reported by the media and election
officials. Five of the eight manufacturers participated in
those calls. Additionally, the program is following up with
election officials and voting system manufacturers to obtain
any information on claims of irregularities reported in the
media during the general election. This effort is ongoing.
Jurisdictions across the United States also perform a
series of logic and accuracy tests prior to operating those
voting machines in polling places. We supports those efforts
through technical assistance and best practices and our grant
monies. Election officials conduct post-election audits to
verify the completeness and accuracy of the tabulated votes.
I am going to conclude with stating that we recognize the
need to do more than ever to strengthen confidence in the
integrity of our elections. HAVA set forth an ambitious agenda
for the EAC, one rooted in protecting the foundation of our
democracy. Despite the challenges in recent years, the EAC has
faithfully fulfilled its obligations and even expanded the
support it provides to election administrators and to voters.
We look forward to working with Congress in a bipartisan manner
as we continue our efforts to help America vote.
I am happy to answer any questions following this
testimony. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Commissioner Palmer.
Our next witness is here in person, James Troupis. Mr.
Troupis serves as the lead attorney for the Trump campaign in
Wisconsin. From 2015 to 2016, Mr. Troupis served as the circuit
court judge in Dane County, Wisconsin. He is currently a
partner at the Troupis Law Office. Mr. Troupis.
TESTIMONY OF JAMES R. TROUPIS, ATTORNEY, TROUPIS LAW FIRM
Mr. Troupis. I am honored to be here, Senator. Thank you
for the invitation.
I have submitted written testimony, which I would ask be in
the record,\1\ and I am going to provide additional remarks at
this point.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Troupis appears in the Appendix
on page 81.
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Chairman Johnson. By the way, without objection,
everybody's submitted testimony is automatically entered into
the record. So go ahead.
Mr. Troupis. Thank you. Absentee voting in Wisconsin is
treated quite differently, I believe, than other parts of the
country. Let me read for you what the legislature found. It is
in our statute. It says that the legislature finds that the
privilege of voting by absentee ballot must be carefully
regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse, to
prevent overzealous solicitation of absent electors who may
prefer not to participate in an election, to prevent undue
influence on an absent elector to vote for or against a
candidate.
As a consequence, our laws are strictly construed, and even
more so, let me read again from the law. Results which do not
comply with those regulations ``may not be included in the
certified result of any election.'' So it is very
straightforward that the State of Wisconsin has taken a very
different view of in-person voting with all the protections and
absentee voting that has been repeatedly, including in the
Carter Commission report, thought to be a source of significant
potential for fraud.
In Wisconsin, we just completed a recount. We had more than
2,500 volunteers, or probably more than 1,000 volunteers for
the Biden campaign as well. Uniquely, we are able to examine
actual envelopes that contain the ballots that are submitted by
absentee voters. This allowed us to identify by person, by
address, by ward--it is not conspiracy. The real names are in
the record. Here is what we found. We found that there were
incomplete and altered certificates. These are the certificates
on the front of the envelopes that have to be exactly done
correctly under our law. If not, those results may not be
counted. How many of those? More than 3,000 of those identified
by person were nonetheless counted, even though they are
clearly invalid under the law.
A second category: initials of clerks are placed on all of
those envelopes. Why? Because the clerk identifies it having
been properly received and identification is provided. That is
the check in advance of the election. What did we find? More
than 2,000 of those ballots in Dane and Milwaukee County had no
initials at all, but, nonetheless, they got counted.
We also have special laws in Wisconsin with regard to
voting in advance. We do not allow advance voting. We allow in-
person and other voting as absentee. So anything before
election day is under our absentee rules. What did the city of
Madison do? They created a system where people could arrive at
a park, hand in their ballots in envelopes, 5 weeks before the
election. They also created boxes, no controls at all, just
boxes on corners, that you could throw the ballot in. No
attempt at all, and our statutes explicitly say there are only
two ways to submit an absentee ballot: in person or delivery to
the clerk's office. That is it. Nothing else is allowed. And
yet the city of Madison, we had 17,271 ballots in this category
that we identify. There are tens of thousands more because they
commingled the ballots afterwards so we could not identify each
one that may have been improperly cast.
Then we have an interesting category called ``indefinitely
confined.'' These are people which the statute--I will read
from the statute--``by age, physical illness, or infirmity or
are disabled indefinitely.'' Among those claiming this status--
so they do not have to provide any identification. Among those
claiming this status is one of the electors for Joe Biden, who
said, ``I cannot get to the polls.'' We have poll workers who
claimed it. We have people who went to protests, people who had
weddings, people who had vacations. All claimed this status:
``I cannot get to the polls,'' so they were able to vote
without identification. There were 28,395 people we explicitly
identified.
Finally, there are other categories in which as much as
170,000 other ballots were submitted without any application.
In fact, they considered the certification envelope the
application though a separate application is required by law.
Three million people properly voted in the State of
Wisconsin. More than 200,000 identified during this recount did
not. But those votes got counted, and our statute says they
should not have been. That, in our view, is a taint on our
election in Wisconsin.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Troupis. I believe Joe
Biden won our State by about 20,000 votes?
Mr. Troupis. Correct.
Chairman Johnson. You are talking about over 200,000 that
were outside of our law that probably, if the law would have
been followed, should not have been counted.
Mr. Troupis. Correct.
Chairman Johnson. Should not have been accepted and should
not have been put in the ballot pool. Of course, the remedy is
not particularly pleasing, which is one of the reasons the
decision went its way. I will come back to you.
Our next witness is via Webex, Representative Francis Ryan.
Representative Ryan has served in the Pennsylvania House of
Representatives since 2016. Mr. Ryan is a certified public
accountant (CPA) and, prior to his election, ran a practice
that focused on corporate restructurings and management. Mr.
Ryan is a retired Marine Reserve Colonel who served as the
Central Command special operations officer in Operation
Enduring Freedom. Representative Ryan.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE FRANCIS X. RYAN,\1\ STATE
REPRESENTATIVE, COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
Mr. Ryan. Thank you so much for the chance to be with you
today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ryan appears in the Appendix on
page 86.
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The mail in-ballots system for the general election in 2020
in Pennsylvania was so fraught with inconsistencies and
irregularities that the reliability of the mail-in votes in the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is almost impossible to rely upon.
The evidence of these violations of the Pennsylvania
election laws as enacted, the election security safeguards, and
the process flaws include things such as:
Actions by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which undermined
the controls inherent in Act 77 of 2019. The controls which
were undermined included: on September 17, 2020, the Supreme
Court unilaterally extended the deadline for mail-in ballots to
be received to 3 days after the election; they mandated that
the ballots mailed without a postmark would be presumed to be
received, and allowed the use of drop boxes for collection
votes.
Then, on October 23, 2020, upon a petition from the
Secretary of the Commonwealth, ruled that mail-in ballots need
not authenticate signatures for the mail-in ballots, thereby
treating in-person and mail-in voters dissimilarly and
eliminating a critical safeguard against potential election
fraud. This is one of my main reasons for believing that it is
difficult to believe that the mail-in voting process can be
relied upon.
Then there were also actions and, candidly, inactions by
the Secretary of State which undermined the consistency and
controls of the election process.
On November 2, the night before the November 3 election and
prior to the prescribed time for pre-canvassing mail-in
ballots, the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth
encouraged certain counties to notify party and candidate
representatives of mail-in voters whose ballots contained
defects.
In certain counties, watchers were not allowed to
meaningfully observe the pre-canvassing and canvassing
activities related to the absentee and the mail-in ballot
process.
Those were at what I would call the strategic level. At the
operational level, there were a significant number of issues
that resulted from those issues.
The Pennsylvania election system is the Statewide Uniform
Registry of Electors (SURE) system, and some of the issues that
took place actually called into question the consistency. For
example, in the case of an over-vote in the case of
Philadelphia County, on November 4th at 11:30, the Department
of State posted updated mail-in vote counts for Philadelphia
County, showing 508,112 ballots despite the fact that only
432,873 ballots were, in fact, issued to voters. This data was
later corrected, but the question becomes: Who had the
authorization to change and correct that information, and who
had access to the system? Any type of system control would ask
for that.
Additionally, on a data file on November 4, 2020, the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Open Data record site reported
3.1 million mail-in ballots sent out. In a prior discussion
that was had the day before the election, it was indicated that
there were 2.7 million that were sent out, and efforts to
attempt to reconcile those numbers have not yet been successful
and still need to be resolved.
Recently, a newly available data voter set from
data.pa.gov, which had been offline for weeks, indicated that
the last update had been done on November 16, 2020. The
download of November 16, 2020, shows 75,505 more ballots
returned on November 16 than the comparable download on
November 15th. So that basically means an additional 75,505
ballots were added to the data set, again, without any
explanation, or without the ability to have a hearing to
determine that, it becomes almost impossible to track in the
system of internal controls.
Additionally, there were mail date irregularities that were
identified in the 3.1 million ballots relative to the dates
that the ballots were finalized, ballots mailed late and
ballots mailed inconsistent with enacted legislation. That was
154,584 ballots.
Voter date of birth irregularities, meaning voters over 100
years of age: 1,573 ballots.
These apparent discrepancies can only be evaluated by
reviewing the transaction logs and to determine the access, the
authority for the entry, the verification of the data entered
as well as the authentication. Anytime you have this type of
system of internal controls, as a CPA you would want to ensure
that the system of internal controls is reasonably designed to
deter wrongdoing.
Before and after the election of November 3, 2020, the
efforts by the State Government Committee and other members of
the Pennsylvania Legislature to obtain oversight information
and relevant data to confirm or deny claims of improprieties
were stymied. Even an effort to have a hearing on November 20,
2020, with Dominion Systems was canceled after Dominion Systems
indicated they were concerned about litigation concerns.
Candidly, without knowing the answers to these questions
and due to the magnitude of the potential discrepancies and
closeness of the election, the results of the 2020 Presidential
election in Pennsylvania would just be completely difficult, if
not impossible, to determine with conclusiveness.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, thank you so much for your
time, and I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Representative Ryan.
Our next witness is Jesse Binnall--did I get that right?
Mr. Binnall. You did.
Chairman Johnson. Wow. Mr. Binnall is an attorney for the
Trump campaign and is lead counsel for the campaign in Nevada.
He is currently a partner at the law firm of Harvey & Binnall.
Mr. Binnall.
TESTIMONY OF JESSE BINNALL,\1\ PARTNER, HARVEY & BINNALL, PLLC
Mr. Binnall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Peters, and Members of the Committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Binnal appears in the Appendix on
page 88.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This year, thousands upon thousands of Nevada voters had
their voices canceled out by election fraud and invalid
ballots. Here is how it happened.
On August 3, 2020, after a rushed special session, Nevada
legislators made drastic changes to the State's election law by
adopting a bill known as Assembly Bill No. 4 (AB 4). The
vulnerabilities of this statute were obvious: It provided for
universal mail voting without sufficient safeguards to
authenticate voters or ensure the fundamental requirement that
only one ballot was sent to each legally qualified voter. This
was aggravated by election officials' failure to clean known
deficiencies in their voter rolls. Because of AB 4, the number
of mail ballots rocketed from about 70,000 in 2016 to over
690,000 this year.
The election was inevitably riddled with fraud, and our
hotline never stopped ringing. While the media and Democrats
accused us of making it all up, our team began chasing down
every lead. Our evidence came both from data scientists and
from brave whistleblowers.
Here is what we found. Over 42,000 people voted more than
once. Our experts were able to make this determination by
reviewing the list of actual voters and comparing it to other
voters with the same name, address, and date of birth. This
method was also able to catch people using different variations
of their first name, such as William and Bill, and individuals
who were registered both under a married name and a maiden
name.
At least 1,500 dead people are recorded as voting, as shown
by comparing the list of mail voters with the Social Security
death records.
More than 19,000 people voted even though they did not live
in Nevada. This does not include military voters or students.
These voters were identified by comparing the lists of voters
with the U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) National Change of
Address database, among other sources.
About 8,000 people voted from nonexistent addresses. Here
we cross-referenced voters with the Coding Accuracy Support
System which allowed our experts to identify undeliverable
addresses.
Over 15,000 votes were cast from commercial or vacant
addresses. Our experts found these voters by analyzing official
U.S. Postal Service records that flag nonresidential addresses
and addresses vacant for more than 90 days.
Incredibly, almost 4,000 noncitizens also voted, as
determined by comparing official Department of Motor Vehicles
(DMV) records of noncitizens to the list of actual voters in
the 2020 election.
The list goes on. All in all, our experts identified
130,000 unique instances of voter fraud in Nevada. But the
actual number is almost certainly higher. Our data scientists
made these calculations not by estimations or statistical
sampling, but by analyzing and comparing the list of actual
voters with other lists, most of which are publicly available.
To put it simply, they explained their methods so others could
check their work. Our evidence has never been refuted, only
ignored.
Two Clark County technical employees came forward,
completely independent of each other, and explained that they
discovered that the number of votes recorded by voting machines
and stored on Universal Serial Bus (USB) drives would change
between the time the polls were closed at night and when they
were reopened the next morning. In other words, votes were
literally appearing and disappearing in the dead of night. When
we attempted to verify the integrity of these voting machines,
we were allowed only a useless visual inspection of the outside
of a USB drive. We were denied a forensic examination.
Finally, our investigation also uncovered a campaign to
illegally incentivize votes from marginalized populations, by
requiring people to prove they voted to receive raffle tickets
for gift cards, televisions, and more.
Our determined team verified these irregularities without
any of the tools of law enforcement, such as grand jury
subpoenas or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents.
Instead, we had less than a month to use critical thinking and
elbow grease to compile our evidence. We tried to obtain
testimony or documents from Clark County officials, but they
obstructed and stonewalled. When we filed suit, State officials
and even courts delayed proceedings for days, but then offered
us merely hours to brief and argue our cases.
And wrapping up, Mr. Chairman, these findings are
disturbing, alarming, and unacceptable in a free society. Our
free and fair election tradition is a precious treasure that we
are charged with protecting. Government by the consent of the
governed is hard to win and easy to lose. Every single time a
fraudulent or illegal vote is cast, the vote of an honest
citizen is canceled out.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Binnall.
Our final witness is also here in person, Christopher
Krebs. He has testified before this Committee a number of
times. Mr. Krebs served as the first Director of the Department
of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency. Mr. Krebs also served in various roles at the
Department, responsible for a range of cybersecurity, critical
information, and national resilience issues. Prior to coming to
DHS, he directed U.S. cybersecurity policy for Microsoft. Mr.
Krebs also served in the Bush Administration advising DHS
leadership on domestic and international risk management as
well as on public-private partnership initiatives.
Mr. Krebs, welcome back.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER C. KREBS,\1\ FORMER
DIRECTOR (2018-20) CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY
AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Krebs. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters, and
Members of the Committee, as you know, I previously served as
the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency. This was the job of a lifetime for me and a tremendous
opportunity to serve the Nation.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Krebs appear in the Appendix on
page 90.
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When I sat before this Committee in 2018 for my
confirmation hearing, I could not have imagined how challenging
and rewarding this job would be. That is why it is such an
honor to appear before this Committee today to testify about
the extraordinary efforts of the election security community to
protect the 2020 election, a difficult task complicated by the
ongoing global pandemic.
Before I get into the substance of my remarks, I am
grateful to this Committee and your leadership and your
guidance over the last several years, first in shepherding what
is probably the best of the 100 bills that came through the
Committee, your efforts for the CISA authorizing statute, and
your support of CISA's efforts securing our elections.
The Nation should also thank the many Federal, State, and
local government election partners for the crucial work that
has been done that would give our citizens the confidence that
their vote was counted as cast. We should also be taking a
victory lap celebrating a job well done.
Consider where we started. When I rejoined the Department
of Homeland Security in 2017, America had just endured a broad
attack on democracy owing to the now-well-documented
interference campaign by the Russian Federation. Whatever their
other motivations, this campaign sought to undermine confidence
in our democratic institutions.
Building on the universal agreement across the national
security community that we cannot allow that to happen again,
the CISA team started with what needed to be improved based on
the 2016 elections.
First, we needed to improve our relationships with our
State and local election officials, the individuals that
actually run our elections.
Second, we needed to improve the security and resilience of
election systems, particularly by phasing out voting machines
without paper ballots.
Third, Federal agencies needed to move faster, work better
together, with each other, and our State and local counterparts
and be more proactive in order to detect and prevent attacks on
our democracy.
Over the course of the last few years, we met these
challenges. We improved CISA's relationships with key partners
through constant engagement and building an election security
community of practice. This improvement is perhaps best
represented by an election-specific information-sharing and
analysis center made up of all 50 States and thousands of
jurisdictions.
We improved the security of systems, scanning for
vulnerabilities in election systems, providing intelligence
briefings, and rapidly alerting to emerging threats, and
deploying security sensors, among other measures. While we were
principally focused on stopping actual hacks, we also had to
content with perception hacks, a form of disinformation which
we countered with our rumor control website.
We contributed to the cross-agency effort to protect the
2020 election by surging coordination and collaboration with
our partners across the national security space.
In conclusion, because of these and other efforts, on
November 12, 2020, government and industry representatives from
the election security community issued a joint statement
reflecting a consensus perspective that the 2020 election was
the most secure in U.S. history. That statement reflects the
confidence these officials gained based on years of work poured
into improving the security and resilience of our elections. It
was based on the strong operational relationships developed
across the election security community. It was based on the
tremendous partnership between CISA under the thoughtful
guidance of this Committee, the FBI, the Election Assistance
Commitment, the Department of Defense (DOD), and the
intelligence community (IC). It was based on an intimate
understanding of how our elections work here in the United
States. It was based on the increase in paper ballots and
audits across the Nation. And probably most importantly, it was
based on the professionals, the heroes that conduct elections
in this country.
While elections are sometimes messy, this was a secure
election. Of that I have no doubt.
Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters, and Members of
this Committee, thank you again for the opportunity to be here
today, for your leadership, and for your support of CISA. I
look forward to answering your questions and sharing more about
our efforts to protect 2020.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Krebs, for your past
service. By the way, I think under both the Obama
Administration and the Trump administration, while I have been
Chairman, I think DHS, now in the form of CISA, has done a very
good job. As you talked about, from 82 to 95 percent paper
ballots, that is improving our election integrity. I appreciate
all your efforts and really all the men and women who work
within DHS and CISA to do that.
Mr. Troupis, the decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court
obviously went against you, maybe not totally against you. I
did read the rather scathing dissent from the chief judge. Can
you describe exactly, in summary fashion, what the Wisconsin
Supreme Court decision was based on your lawsuit talking about
all the areas that you have a concern with?
Mr. Troupis. Certainly. The Wisconsin Supreme Court was
urged by the Biden campaign not to address any substantive
issues, and that is exactly what happened. The Biden campaign
argued to the court that we are not going to talk about any of
the substantive things; we are not even going to dispute the
things I just brought up to you; but instead you just should
not hear them because a State agency, the Wisconsin Election
Commission, had authorized some of these activities. Candidly,
as Chief Justice Roggensack and other dissenters held, one, the
claims are substantive, they are substantial, and they needed
to be addressed.
Second, the Wisconsin Election Commission is a bureaucratic
organization, explicitly that the same court just 4 months ago
has no meaning. It is not law. It is some advice given and that
the statute should control. We were disappointed not so much in
the decision but in the fact that the decision itself is
premised not on an analysis of the law nor an analysis of the
claims. It is an idea that we should not have a transparent
system that you are not going to address these things, and that
is what they argued.
So it is disappointing, especially in Wisconsin. Senator
Johnson, as you know, we have a long history in Wisconsin,
unlike other States, I know unlike other States, of high
transparency. Our recounts were conducted with utmost integrity
by both Milwaukee and Dane County, with thousands of volunteers
able to look at those items, and it is really a sad day,
frankly, when the opposition does not argue we are wrong; it
argues we should not be heard. That is a strange thing in a
State that is so transparent as ours.
Chairman Johnson. Just real quick, I know former Director
Krebs talked about the men and women who run these elections. I
had about at least a half-hour phone conversation with the
county clerk of my town of Oshkosh voting precinct who gave me
all kinds of good information. I will tell you, if every county
clerk ran their elections like Jeanette Merten does, we would
have a completely secure election. I think that is true of the
vast majority of elections in different precincts.
Mr. Binnall, Mr. Troupis is talking about the law that he
was arguing before the Wisconsin Supreme Court was basically
ignored. You had a similar statement, that it was not that the
information that you just presented to the Committee--it was
never rebutted; it was simply ignored. Can you talk about that?
Mr. Binnall. Yes, Mr. Chairman. It was extremely
disappointing that rather than address our issues and the data
that we presented head on, they simply tried to use
technicalities and limiting our evidence, limiting the amount
of witnesses we could bring forward, saying that we could not
introduce any live testimony but only 15 depositions--we could
only use 15 depositions to show 130,000 instances of voter
fraud. And then when it went to the Supreme Court of Nevada,
they gave us 2 hours to brief the issues before immediately
coming down with a decision. Our record was over 8,000 pages
long. We were never fully considered by those courts. They
never took a good, hard list at hard evidence.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Krebs, you have testified here on
this specific issue, the potential for foreign interference to
have an impact on our elections. We have had private
conversations. I have always categorized the ability for
foreigners to interfere with an election in kind of three
buckets: one is changing the vote tallies on the machines;
second is hacking into voter registration files, which could
cause all kinds of problems, but quite honestly, probably would
be detected on election day when there is chaos; and then,
third, what I think is a more serious problem, the one more
difficult to detect, is basically the use of social media.
You quoted the CISA group that declared this the most
secure election in our history?
Mr. Krebs. Yes, sir, that was the joint Government
Coordinating Council (GCC) and Sector Coordinating Councils'
(SCC) statement.
Chairman Johnson. OK. One of the reasons I have always
stated based on our discussions of your testimony, to my
knowledge it is almost impossible to change the vote tally by
hacking into these computers was based on the fact that these
things are not connected and most of them do not even have the
capability of being connected to the Internet. Based on all
these allegations people are talking to, it sounds like some of
these machines or certainly the tabulators can and are
connected to the Internet.
So can you just kind of explain to me, the whole voting
machine tabulation, Internet connections, is just a huge
confusing mess. Can you speak to that?
Mr. Krebs. I think it is important to step back and
actually look at how votes are cast in the country,
particularly with paper ballots, and that, regardless of any
Internet connections, regardless of any foreign hacking, as
long as you have the paper receipt----
Chairman Johnson. But let me stop you there. I acknowledge
that, yes, the paper backup is the control--if it is used. That
was going to be my next question. So set aside the control of
the machine process. What is capable--again, I kind of want to
know on what basis, what aspects of this is the most secure?
Because when you listen to Mr. Troupis and Mr. Binnall, there
was fraud in this election. I do not have any doubt about that.
There was fraud. We just do not know the extent, and we do not
know what the remedy would be when identified. OK?
Again, just speak to the computer aspect of this, the
connection to the Internet, the possibility if these machines
are connected to the Internet, or if in the certification
process--because I think, Mr. Palmer, in our discussions, you
were talking a little bit about the fact that people attempted
to change the controls or the program in these computers inside
that certification process.
But, Mr. Krebs, just talk to the computer aspect of this
because, again, it is the most difficult, confusing aspect of
these allegations.
Mr. Krebs. Yes, there are a number of different systems and
machines and computers involved in the entirety of the election
process, from registration through ballot design, through
ballot printing, to actual voting and into the tabulation and
post-election process. Throughout, particularly where a vote is
cast on election day, those machines tend to and should not be
connected to the Internet, certainly as a best practice.
Chairman Johnson. But some have the capability, don't they?
Mr. Krebs. Some may have modems that are typically
disabled, but in certain States, I believe in Wisconsin some
are temporarily activated to transmit some counts. But, again,
when you have paper and you can conduct a post-election audit--
--
Chairman Johnson. Again, if they are----
Mr. Krebs. Important security control that----
Chairman Johnson. Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Krebs. Technology in elections are used to facilitate
access and increase accuracy of the process, but election
officials are very careful that technology is not a single
point of failure and that there are security controls before,
during, and after the process.
Chairman Johnson. Again, finish this aspect of the computer
thing. My time has already expired, but we will come back to
how many audits, the statistical sampling, that type of thing,
to use those paper backups to the electronic voting. But, you
know, finish this----
Mr. Krebs. Right. As you move out from election day, there
will be tabulators that may have Internet connections to
transmit the vote from the precinct to the county level, to the
State, again security controls in place. As long as you have
the paper--you cannot hack paper--you can run that process.
Chairman Johnson. But those tabulators are connected on
election day because that is how they transmit the data to the
counties and also into the unofficial----
Mr. Krebs. In some cases, yes, sir.
Chairman Johnson. Yes, OK. I will follow up. Senator
Peters.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have questions for Mr. Krebs, but before I get to that, I
just want to be clear. We have heard a number of statements
made by other witnesses. We have heard those statements before.
We are continuing to hear those statements. I would just say to
anybody who is watching this hearing, look at the 60 court
cases that have been brought before the judiciary in this
country and how the arguments--or I should say the statements.
They are not really arguments. They are statements that have
been made. They have all been rejected by courts of law,
including in Wisconsin, which was a Republican judge that
rejected the arguments made by this administration. So just
take a look at all this that we are putting into the record.\1\
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\1\ The documents referenced by Ranking Member Peters appear in the
Appendix on page 145.
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Mr. Krebs, CISA has the primary responsibility for working
with State and local election officials and the private sector
to secure our election infrastructure. It is important for
folks to realize where you sat and what were your
responsibilities. In essence, you were tasked with coordinating
with thousands of your partners across the country to ensure
the integrity of the 2020 election. That was your job. By all
accounts, you were very successful at that.
President Trump's own Department of Justice concluded, and
I am going to quote the Department of Justice in the Trump
administration, ``We have not seen fraud on a scale that could
have effected a different outcome in the election.''
The Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating
Council, Executive Committee on the Election Infrastructure
Sector Coordinating Council comprising of Federal, State, and
local government officials and numerous private sector
organizations from all around the country jointly called this
``the most secure in American history.''
You also echoed this statement, and when you echoed that
statement, you were fired by President Trump. He did not want
to hear that, clearly.
So my question to you: Do you stand by that statement? Have
you seen anything in the weeks since November 4th that would
lead you to change your mind? And have you identified any
credible claim of widespread election irregularities?
Mr. Krebs. I stand by the claim. I said it in my opening
statement. It is my written testimony. I have yet to see
anything from a security perspective that would change my
opinion on that. Fraud is a different matter. It is a criminal
matter. But, again, bolstered by the Attorney General's (AG)
statement from last week or recently, again, nothing to change
my opinion of that matter.
Senator Peters. So yet despite more than 5 weeks now that
the President has lost and numerous public officials have
continued to pressure State and local elected officials to push
what is a demonstrably false narrative that election
irregularities should somehow make him a winner of this race,
you have willingly--in fact, these folks are willingly fanning
the flames of discontent, and they are in the process of
weakening institutions that are essential for our
representative democracy.
My question to you is: What is the danger, in your
estimation, to the democratic process to challenge the
legitimacy of an election and deny its results in the absence
of any credible evidence?
Mr. Krebs. I think generally from a timing perspective,
particularly with the seating of the Electoral College and 306
electoral votes for President-elect Biden, I think we are past
the point where we need to be having conversations about the
outcome of this election. I think that continued assaults on
democracy and the outcome of this election only serve to
undermine confidence in the process is ultimately, as you both
have said, ultimately corrosive to the institutions that
support elections, and going forward it will be that much
harder.
The trick about elections is that, you are not so much
trying to convince the winner they won; it is the loser that
they lost. You need willing participants on both sides, and I
think we have to get back to that point. Otherwise, we are
going to have a very difficult time going forward maintaining
confidence in this American experiment.
Senator Peters. During the 2016 election, we saw foreign
disinformation campaigns trying to sow doubt about the
integrity of our election. We have seen that before, very
clearly, in 2016, and certainly all in the intelligence
community in this country back that up. In fact, CISA's rumor
control page was actually created within your agency--you
mentioned it in your testimony--to address foreign
disinformation having an impact on the election. Yet rather
than creating fake news, it seems as if Russia has simply used
State-controlled news outlets to basically push President
Trump's own statements and lies about a rigged election.
Our adversaries do not have to be technologically advanced.
Our adversaries do not have to be creative to sow that doubt.
All they have to do is air the words of American elected
officials on their State-owned news networks.
As Clint Watts said--he is a former FBI agent and a
disinformation expert. As he put it, which I think is very
strong, he said, ``Nothing that Russia, Iran, or China could
say is anywhere near as wild as what the President is saying.''
My question is: How are our foreign adversaries taking
advantage of false claims of broad election fraud by the
President and his supporters or hearings like we hearing here,
we are hearing these statements again, that are broadly
claiming systemic irregularities where none exist? How damaging
is that?
Mr. Krebs. So talking about rumor control very briefly, I
think that that was an innovation in government that we created
on the fly to address some emerging threats. The point, though,
that I would like to highlight with rumor control is that it
was intended to identify and debunk issues as they were
emerging, and we saw domestic disinformation campaigns of a
cybersecurity nature that were emerging in the days and weeks
following the election. I will specifically talk about the
``Hammer and Scorecard'' claims, that there was a CIA super
computer and program that were flipping votes throughout the
country, in Georgia specifically.
But, again, Chairman Johnson, I am going to keep coming
back to it. That is why it is so important to have a paper
trail. That is why it is so important to have paper ballots, so
even if there was foreign interference of a malicious algorithm
nature, you can always go back to the receipts. You can check
your math. Georgia did that three times, and the outcomes were
consistent over and over and over again.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Which, by the way, is precisely why I
brought that up in my opening statement. That should provide
comfort that we have that paper backup. But I just have to talk
about Russian disinformation, because the people peddling it
are not on my side of the aisle. Senior Democrat leaders,
including Ranking Member Peters, were involved in a process of
creating a false intelligence product that was supposedly
classified, they leaked to the media, that accused Senator
Grassley, the President Pro Tem of the Senate, and myself of
accepting and disseminating Russian disinformation from Andrii
Derkach. I had never heard of the person until they brought it
up. Senator Peters introduced that false information, Russian
disinformation, into our investigation record. Fifty people
associated with the intelligence community after our Hunter
Biden investigation and the revelations of the Hunter Biden
computer said, oh, this is Russian disinformation. Now we find
out it is a real investigation by the Justice Department.
So it is just galling, and I just have to point out that
the purveyors of Russian disinformation, Hillary Clinton's
campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Steele
dossier, Ranking Member Peters accusing Senator Grassley and I
of disseminating Russian disinformation, that is where the
disinformation is coming. That is where the false information,
the lies, the false allegations. I cannot sit by here and
listen to this and say that this is not disinformation in this
hearing today. This is getting information we have to take a
look at to restore confidence in our election integrity. We are
not going to be able to just move on without bringing up these
irregularities, examining them, and providing an explanation
and see where there really are problems so we can correct it
moving forward. Senator Paul.
Senator Peters. Mr. Chairman, I have to respond to that.
You are saying I am putting out information----
Chairman Johnson. Try.
Senator Peters. One, I had nothing to do with this report--
--
Chairman Johnson. You lied repeatedly----
Senator Peters. I did not----
Chairman Johnson. You lied repeatedly in the press that I
was spreading Russian disinformation, and that was an outright
lie, and I told you to stop lying, and you continued to do it.
Senator Peters. Mr. Chairman, this is not about airing your
grievances. I do not know what rabbit hole you are running
down----
Chairman Johnson. You talked about Russian disinformation.
Senator Peters. You are rushing down rabbit holes.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Paul.
Senator Peters. This is simply not what we are dealing
with.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Paul.
Senator Peters. No, Mr. Chairman, you cannot make false
allegations and then drop it there. That is why this
Committee----
Chairman Johnson. Senator Paul.
Senator Peters [continuing]. Needs to return back to----
This is terrible what you are doing to this Committee, and
all the great work that you talked about----
Chairman Johnson. It is what you have done to this
Committee----
Senator Peters. It is not the case----
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. Falsely accusing the
Chairman of spreading disinformation. Nothing could have been
further from the truth, and you are spouting it again, which is
why I had----
Senator Peters. Oh, come on, Mr. Chairman. This is
outrageous.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PAUL
Senator Paul. Judge Starr, it has been alleged that 60
courts have refused to hear these cases; therefore, there was
no fraud in the election. I guess another way of looking at
this is that the court cases have been refused for procedural
and technical reasons. When you see the 60 court cases
rejected, do you think that is a conclusion by our court system
that there is no fraud? Or do you think that the court cases
were primarily rejected for procedural reasons?
Mr. Starr. Right, Senator Paul, it is my understanding that
the vast majority of these cases were rejected for rightly
stated procedural reasons as opposed to a merits-based or
substantive-based evaluations. Of course, we saw that very
recently and I think most dramatically by the Supreme Court's
unanimous rejection of the bill of complaint filed by the Texas
Attorney General, my home State here. The entirety of the
decision was based upon the legal concept of standing. You just
do not, Texas, have standing to object to what happened in
Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or whatever. And that is a reasonable
ruling. There are those who would quarrel with it in that we
are a United States of America, and if something bad happens in
one State that ends up having an effect on another State, we
have such respect for our States as sovereign entities within
our union that the argument is, I think, quite reasonable, and
I think others think it is quite reasonable, that at least the
matter should have been heard under the original jurisdiction.
I think that is a key example.
Senator Paul. Yes, and I think it is important, though,
that we look at this and understand what courts are saying and
not saying. The courts have not said there was not fraud. The
courts just simply did not rule on or hear from the fraud.
I do think there is an important issue here, though. The
fraud is one aspect of this, and I think courts have
historically been reticent to get involved in elections and to
look at fraud, but moving forward, we have to change the rules
or reevaluate our State rules in order that this does not
happen again. We cannot just sit by and say, we are going to
let it happen again.
There is another important aspect to this, though, that is
a legal aspect that I think does need to be heard by the
courts, and I do not know if it can be heard beyond the
election, but I think it should. This is the question of
whether or not people who are nonlegislators can change the
election law. This happened in many States. Probably two dozen
States decided to accept ballots after the election. Two dozen
States decided they could mail out applications or mail out
ballots, all without the will of the legislature.
Do you think there is any hope for any of this being heard,
Judge Starr? Outside of the concept of changing the election,
is there any possibility any court is going to ever hear this
and say that it was wrong that Secretaries of State changed the
law in the middle of this pandemic without the approval of the
legislature? Or do you think there is no hope because it is
mixed up in electoral politics? Judge Starr.
Mr. Starr. I think there is a possibility because this
issue may return in light of the use, this unprecedented use of
mail-in ballots, and the concern that is a bipartisan concern,
again, the Carter-Baker Commission, that we need to look at
these issues. I think there is a doctrine, Senator Paul, to
essentially say this issue may recur again. It should not be
washed out as being moot because there is a very important
principle here, as I said in my opening statement and in my
written statement. The Constitution is very clear that it is
the prerogative of State legislatures to determine what these
rules and laws are. And that was, I must say, flagrantly
violated in Pennsylvania and perhaps elsewhere as well.
Senator Paul. Yes, I think the legal question there is a
very easy one to decide. I think even as a physician I can
figure out that the Secretary of State cannot create law. I do
think, though, that many of us who wanted this to be heard by
the Supreme Court and are disappointed actually also might be
disappointed by the precedent of Bush v. Gore in the sense that
I think Bush v. Gore's precedent is shutting down elections
that have been certified. They were not going to continue to
count the hanging chads. The Secretary of State had certified
it. I actually think that the Bush v. Gore precedent actually
argues against the Supreme Court overturning certified
elections. Do you have an opinion on that?
Mr. Starr. I do not have an opinion on that specifically. I
think that Bush v. Gore stands for this basic proposition: You
cannot have changes in election laws after the fact. You must,
in fact, be faithful to what the State legislature has done.
That is also what Justice Alito said in his opinion, I think
essentially condemning but certainly identifying as a huge
issue what had happened in Pennsylvania. I think all in all,
Bush v. Gore is just a reiteration of our constitutional
structure.
Senator Paul. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, as we go on with this, I think it is
important that we not stop here. A lot of the laws that have to
be confirmed and I think reaffirmed are State laws, so it is
not in our purview. But the State laws are set, and then we
have Federal elections. So what we have heard about what
happened in Wisconsin and what happened in Nevada I think is
absolutely true, and we have to prevent it from happening
again.
I think State legislatures will need to reaffirm that
election law can only be changed by a State legislature. I
think there is a lot of work to be done. While we will not
dictate it to the States, I think we should have hearings going
into the next year, hearing from State legislatures and what
they are going to do to make sure election law is upheld, not
changed by people who are not legislators. We do have an
interest in that. I do not want it to be Federal laws. Many on
the other side of the aisle would just as soon Federalize it
and mail everybody a ballot and we will have this universal
corruption throughout the land. But what I think we need to do
is keep it at the State level, but we cannot just say it did
not happen. We cannot just say, oh, 4,000 people voted in
Nevada that were noncitizens and we are just going to ignore
it, we are going to sweep it under the rug, the courts have
decided the facts? The courts have not decided the facts. The
courts never looked at the facts. The courts do not like
elections, and they stayed out of it by finding an excuse,
standing or otherwise, to stay out of it. But the fraud
happened. The election in many ways was stolen, and the only
way it will be fixed is by in the future reinforcing the laws.
And then a last comment I would say on what Mr. Krebs--and
he can speak for himself, but I think his job was keeping the
foreigners out of the election, and it was the most secure
election based on security of the Internet and technology. But
he never has voiced an opinion--he is welcome to today--on
whether or not dead people voted. I do not think he examined
that. Did he examine noncitizens voting? So to say it was the
safest election, sure, I agree with your statement if you are
referring to foreign intervention. But if you are saying it is
the safest election based on no dead people voted, no
noncitizens voted, no people broke the absentee rules, I think
that is false. I think that is what has upset a lot of people
on our side, is that they are taking your statement to mean,
oh, well, there was no problem in the election. I do not think
you examined any of the problems that we have heard here, so,
really, you are just referring to something differently, the
way I look at it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Lankford. [Presiding.] Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. To our witnesses,
those that are here and those that are afar, we welcome you.
I just want to say to Chris Krebs on behalf of many of us
on both sides of the aisle, thank you for your leadership and
for a job well done. Thank you for your courage to speak truth
to power.
Mr. Chairman and colleagues, President Lincoln once said
these words. He said, ``If given the truth, people can be
depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is
to bring them the real facts.'' Those were his words. That is
what we in the Navy call ``the straight skinny.'' With all due
respect, the American people have had the facts with respect to
the outcome of this election for some time now. The truth, the
straight skinny, if you will, is staring us in the face. It may
not be what President Trump and his supporters wanted, but Joe
Biden and Kamala Harris received more votes than any ticket in
American history. That is a success for our democracy. It is
something we ought to be celebrating. A success made possible
in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic, thanks to ordinary
citizens who volunteered as poll workers across the country.
Many of them risked their own health to oversee a fair count
while hundreds of thousands of postal workers worked tirelessly
to deliver absentee ballots.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,
ably led by Chris Krebs, has called this election the ``most
secure in American history.'' He has called it that again here
today. Throughout this country, courts have flat-out rejected
claims of election irregularities. Conservative Trump-appointed
judges in State after State have dismissed the Trump campaign's
claims, calling them ``baseless'' and worse. Let me just cite a
couple of examples.
In response to the legal challenge from the Trump campaign
in Pennsylvania, a Federal judge, appointed by President Trump
and a long-time member of the conservative Federalist Society,
wrote that, ``Charges of unfairness are serious, but calling an
election `unfair' does not make it so. Charges require specific
allegations and then proof.''
He went on to say, ``We have neither here.''
One of the most strongly worded opinions came from a
Wisconsin State justice who served as president of a chapter of
Federalist Society and as chief legal counsel to former
Republican Governor Scott Walker. Here is what he said:
``Something far more fundamental than the winner of Wisconsin's
electoral votes is implicated in this case.'' He wrote that in
declining to hear a case asking the court to overturn the
election results.
He went on to say this: ``At stake is faith in our of free
and fair elections, a feature central to the enduring strength
of our constitutional republic.''
To that, I think we should all just say, ``Amen.''
We learned this week that the arguments from the Trump
legal team thus far have been defeated 59 times out of 61 in
State and Federal courts. Fifty-nine times, including 9-zip by
the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, just last week.
I am wearing my mask here for my alma mater, undergraduate
alma mater of Ohio State where I was a Navy Reserve Officers
Training Corps (ROTC) midshipman. But if the football coach at
Ohio State were to go 2-59 over a period of 4 years, he would
be fired. That is what the voters of this country have done
with our President, like it or not.
Those 61 cases, at least 59 of them were not close calls.
In suit after suit across red and blue States, in opinions
written by liberal and ultra-conservative judges, the Trump
campaign's largely contrived allegations have been rejected.
Four years after Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 3
million votes, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won it by a whopping
7 million votes, and they received 306 votes in the Electoral
College just earlier this week, a margin described 4 years ago
by Candidate Trump as a ``landslide.''
What if the outcome is not as definitive 4 years from now
or 8 years from now? What if? And with different judges on the
bench, different candidates, and a lot less integrity and
courage from State and local officials, a defeated party might
somehow be able to steal an election, as is alleged here
falsely. Think about that. It somehow might be able to steal an
election. Friends, that ought to scare the hell out of all of
us.
Meanwhile, many of the President's supporters across the
country continue to spread misinformation and false allegations
about the Presidential election. The truth of the matter is in
a lot of States, many of the voters who voted for Joe Biden for
President turned around on their ballots and they voted on
down-ballot races, to our chagrin as Democrats, they voted
Republicans. They voted for Republicans in congressional races,
in State legislative races, and more. You know what we call
that in Delaware? We call it ``ticket splitting.'' It is as old
as our democracy. It is not a conspiracy. It is plain and
simple ticket splitting. We have done it before, and we are
going to do it again.
Let me go on to say that what we say in this Committee and
in this body matters, and if we continue to push what the
courts have over time overwhelmingly called ``baseless'' claims
of fraud, we not only risk permanent damage to our democracy;
we also become complicit in threats and attacks against
election officials and ordinary citizens. In Georgia,
nonpartisan election technicians have faced death threats
simply for doing their jobs. Georgia's Secretary of State and
his family have received death threats.
Mr. Krebs, our witness here today, a Trump appointee, has
been bombarded with threats ever since an attorney for
President Trump's campaign said on national TV--what did he
say? He said, ``Krebs should be taken out at dawn and shot.''
And just this week, ``credible threats of violence'' closed
the Michigan State Capitol, and electors in Pennsylvania needed
law enforcement escorts when they went to cast their votes.
This is not the America that our Founding Fathers dreamed
of. This is shameful. Enough already. We have work to do to get
America back on track, starting right here, right here in this
Congress, in this House.
All of us, Democrats and Republicans here in this body,
need to do our jobs, and that is just the beginning. There are
over 250 million Americans who need to be vaccinated. There are
millions of businesses that need a helping hand. Tens of
millions of students who need to be back in school getting an
education, hundreds of thousands of hospital and nursing home
workers who just need a break. But it is going to be hard to
move forward as a country with dispatch or as a Congress until
we accept the clear results of this election and turn the page.
In 1787, colleagues, delegates from 13 colonies convened in
Philadelphia to debate the future of our country. They
disagreed on a lot of things, but they all agreed on this: They
did not want a king. Responding to arguments for the Trump
legal team in Wisconsin, a member of the State Supreme Court
there echoed sentiments recently when she said to them, ``You
want us to overturn this election so that your king can stay in
power? That is un-American.'' And you know what? She was right.
It is un-American.
Mr. Chairman and colleagues--the Chairman is not sitting
here; he is out voting. But when Chairman Johnson became the
leader of this Committee in 2015, he pledged to run this
Committee, and I quote, ``with a spirit of bipartisan team
work, respect, integrity, and professionalism.'' That has been
the hallmark of this Committee for years, for decades, and
those words were reassuring to me. I know they were to our
colleagues on this Committee, the staffs that we lead, and a
few years later, when the Chairman and I worked together to
introduce and enact the bipartisan Presidential Transition
Improvement Act, he said, and I quote, ``The peaceful
transition of power from one administration to the next is the
hallmark of our democracy.''
Those are words we hope and expect to hear from our
leaders, words that appeal to our better angels, words that
unite us, not divide us.
Sadly, I fear that today's hearing may not be truly
reflective of those words. I hope I am wrong. But if I am not,
today's hearing could prove deeply disappointing to me and to
the 330 million people that we serve across this Nation. Let us
not disappoint them.
As we continue with this hearing today, I would just say to
our Chairman, you asked our witnesses to stand and take an oath
to tell the truth. It is only fair for all of us to hold
ourselves to the same standard. If our Nation's leaders do not
embrace the truth in our daily discourse, then we no longer
have a democracy that will endure. Calling an election
``unfair'' does not make it so, and spreading misinformation in
this Committee or any committee does not just stay inside these
four walls.
I will conclude with this: I began my statement today with
the words of Abraham Lincoln. I want to conclude it with the
words attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Here is what he said:
``If the people know the truth, they will not make a mistake.''
``If the people know the truth, they will not make a
mistake.''
So let us tell them the truth. Let us tell them the truth
today, tomorrow, and for generations to come. The truth will
keep us free. The truth will keep us free. It always has, and
it always will.
Thank you.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. Thank you. The Chairman ran down to vote
quickly, and we are in the middle of a vote series, and so we
are going to maintain the hearing and continue to be able to
move through this hearing process, though there are two votes,
and so you will see us switching back and forth while he is
running to vote. I am going to sit in for a moment for the
Chairman, and I am going to recognize myself for the next round
of questions. I happen to be next in line, so I am not actually
pulling time here. But I want to be able to recognize myself
and be able to do that. When he returns, we will switch out,
and I will run to vote. And then we will run back and forth.
In December 2016, there was a poll that was done on if the
American people believed that the Russians interfered and
changed our election. At that time, 32 percent of the people
believed that the Russians had influenced the outcome of the
election in December 2016.
Based on that belief and what was going on, there was
launched a whole series of hearings. Certainly the Russians
were trying to interfere in our elections, but we spent
millions and millions of dollars investigating it, going
through it, ramping up entities like CISA and others to be able
to go engage, to be able to make sure we could protect our next
election. Senator Klobuchar and I worked for years on election
security legislation and worked to be able to get that
implemented. We did six different public hearings on Russian
interference, just on that one topic, to make sure that we were
paying attention to it when it all started with 32 percent of
Americans in December 2016 believing the Russians had
interfered in our election.
A few days ago, another poll asked the question: Do you
believe there was election and voter fraud in the Presidential
election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump? This December, 46
percent of the voters in America have said yes; 45 percent
saying no. Interestingly enough, Trump voters say there was
fraud, 80 percent; Biden voters also said, 16 percent, that
they believed that there was voter fraud.
The reason I bring that up is we watched what happened in
2016 and what the American people thought and saw, and so we
engaged with hearings, we looked at the issues, and determine
do things need to change. Much of the work that has gone on in
the last several years to be able to get paper ballots into
States happened because this Congress engaged on an issue where
we saw an obvious problem. And so we distributed Federal
dollars, assistance, and a constant drumbeat to say these
States have to fix the areas where they do not have paper
ballots, and we have the potential for problems. That was the
question. Is there a potential for a problem? The answer was
yes, there is a potential, and we ought to fix that.
Now, amazingly, after this election, all kinds of issues
have come up and said there are potentials for problems, and
everyone seems to be saying, ``Move on.'' The only reason I can
think that that would be different was because the election
outcome seemed to be different. One side is now saying, ``Let
us just move on and ignore this.''
In my State, on election night, like 27 other States in the
country, by that evening we were counting votes and all
absentee ballots had been received. There was much less
opportunity for accusations of fraud because all of our ballots
were in. Amazingly enough, a week after the election was
completed this November, Oklahomans were listening to other
States that were saying things like, ``We do not know how many
more ballots there are left to count.'' We had been done for a
week. We and 27 other States had been completed for a week.
That gives opportunities for fraud and questions and problems.
That is a reasonable question to ask.
It is reasonable to be able to ask if people can drift
around and gather ballots from other people and do ballot
harvesting--and in some States that is legal--does that provide
an opportunity for fraud? I think the obvious answer is yes.
The obvious answer is if you mail a ballot to everyone in the
State, even if they did not ask for it, does it provide an
opportunity for fraud, especially when the State did not first
purge or verify those addresses and they sent thousands of
ballots to people that no longer lived there?
I have talked to Nevada residents that received multiple
ballots at their home for people that no longer live there.
That is a problem. We should at least admit that is a problem.
For some reason, the other side was very focused on we have to
fix the potential for a problem for 2016, but in 2020 when
there is a potential for a problem and things that have been
shown, everyone seems to say, ``Move along. Let us not discuss
this.''
There is a system called the Electronic Registration
Information Center (ERIC) system that is in place that 30
States cooperate with. It helps them verify if people have
moved and they are registered in two different States or if
they have moved into your State and are registered somewhere
else. It helps them determine if they are voting in two
different States.
Only 30 States use that. Other States are not. Even of the
30 States that use it, not all of them are actually using it.
They literally are on the system, but they are not actually
purging their rolls when they know there are people that have
moved out of their States and have been informed of that.
Just this last year, in the ERIC system they identified
91,000 people that are registered voters that are dead. Ninety-
one thousand that that one system had recognized.
There are problems in the system, and in this conversation
that I have had with so many people and I have said, ``Is it a
problem that people are voting in two States? Is it a problem
that people are voting if they are dead?'' And this is what I
hear over and over again. This has been going on for years.
``So why don't we fix it?'' should be the next statement.
Instead, the statement seems to be, ``Well, let us just move
along.''
Mr. Binnall, 42,000 people in Nevada voted more than once,
according to your work in this. Forty-two thousand people.
Fifteen hundred people voted in Nevada that were dead; 19,000
people voted though they did not live in Nevada, and they were
not a college student. Eight thousand people voted from a
nonexistent address; 15,000 people voted though they were
registered to a commercial address or a vacant address; and
4,000 people voted in Nevada that are noncitizens.
My question to you is: In my State, when someone votes
twice--and we do have that occasionally, about 50 times a year
that that actually occurs in our State--we prosecute
individuals that vote twice. Of this 130,000 instances that you
have identified from the 2020 election in Nevada, do you know
of any prosecutions currently going on in Nevada for any voter
fraud?
Mr. Binnall. Not yet, Senator, and that is extremely
important. These laws have to be enforced. We, of course--I
represent the Trump campaign and the campaign's electors. I do
not represent the government. We cannot bring prosecutions. But
if we are going to enforce voter integrity laws, they must be
enforced, and we are confident that, although it often takes a
long time to put together a fraud case, although it takes
prosecutors months, sometimes even years, to go through
subpoenas and warrants and using the FBI to go investigate
these things, once a good, hard look at these cases is
examined, an honest look, if we do that, there should be
charges brought, because the Ranking Member brought up in his
remarks that when you lose the principle of one person, one
vote, the end result is authoritarianism. That is exactly what
we are saying here today.
Senator Lankford. Right, and that is--Mr. Chairman, could I
ask for one additional moment?
Judge Starr, you have raised twice this issue about
Pennsylvania and that the laws of Pennsylvania were changed. In
Oklahoma, we did State Bill 210 and State Bill 1779 because we
saw with the pandemic there were going to be problems. So our
legislature came into session, made a change to be able to
adjust for how we were going to do early ballots and early
voting, because we knew that was the law that needed to be
followed. Was that done in Pennsylvania? And does it matter who
sets the law and the rules for elections?
Mr. Starr. No, it was not done, unfortunately, in
Pennsylvania. The Governor sought to change the law. The
General Assembly in Pennsylvania had met, reviewed, and made
various and sundry changes and reforms. And then the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court, building on what the Governor had
done, made additional changes, and those in my judgment were
complete violations of the United States Constitution and
flagged as such preliminarily by Justice Samuel Alito. So the
Oklahoma Legislature did it the right way.
Senator Lankford. Judge Starr, thank you very much. Senator
Hassan.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN
Senator Hassan. Thank you very much. I just want to test
that folks can hear me.
Senator Lankford. They can.
Senator Hassan. OK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and our
Ranking Member. I want to also thank all our witnesses for
being here today. I would like to specifically acknowledge
former CISA Director Chris Krebs. Director Krebs, I want to
thank you for your work in standing up the agency as CISA's
first Director and in securing our elections.
I am deeply troubled by your abrupt and unjustified
dismissal, which has made our country less safe. Now more than
ever, the challenges of this pandemic and our Nation's
increased reliance on online services requires the experience
and steady leadership that you have displayed. Even so, I want
to express my deep thanks to you and to the men and women at
CISA for the work that you have done and will continue to do to
help make our country and our communities safer.
Now, I have three questions for you, Director Krebs. Let us
start with this one. As the CISA Director, you attempted to
tackle disinformation campaigns via the rumor control effort by
CISA. That is the name you all gave it. Rumor control is a
resource featured on CISA's website to debunk common
misinformation and disinformation narratives.
First, in your time as CISA Director, were you ever asked
by any administration official to refrain from debunking
disinformation or misinformation?
Mr. Krebs. Yes, ma'am, thank you for the question. I was
never directly approached on any rumor control changes or
alterations. I understand my staff was. I told them that if
anyone had any problems with what was on rumor control, I was
the Senate-confirmed leader of the agency; ultimately I
approved content, and they would need to come talk to me about
that. I never got that phone call or visit.
Senator Hassan. But you are saying that staff did report to
you that there was outreach from officials asking them to make
changes?
Mr. Krebs. Yes, ma'am.
Senator Hassan. Were you ever asked to take down an entry
that debunked a conspiracy theory?
Mr. Krebs. Not directly, no, ma'am.
Senator Hassan. Was your staff?
Mr. Krebs. They were asked about some of the content, and,
again, I reiterated and reinforced that I owned that content,
and if anybody had an issue with it, they needed to come talk
to me.
Senator Hassan. Was it ever implied that your job was at
stake if you did not ease up on debunking disinformation?
Mr. Krebs. I certainly never interpreted any statements or
anything along those lines, no, ma'am.
Senator Hassan. I would like to explore with you further,
perhaps after this panel, some of what you just said in terms
of your staff, but I want to move on to a couple of other
things just in the interest of time.
Director Krebs, given your experience with tackling
disinformation, I want to talk about the post-election
disinformation campaign that has been waged. The President and
many others have tweeted outlandish claims of massive voter
fraud and truly wild conspiracy theories. However, the
President's lawyers will not or do not usually bring these same
claims when they go into court. When they do, the judges, often
conservative or Republican-appointed judges, have dismissed
them.
Director Krebs, given your experience with disinformation
campaigns, why do you think there is such a gulf between
rhetoric and reality? What is the goal of this disinformation
campaign?
Mr. Krebs. I think generally the disinformation now,
currently particularly domestically, is being used to create
confusion and drive a certain narrative. But our point with
rumor control at CISA was about identifying, initially foreign
activities, but it became more of a domestic or even uncertain
origin, and it was things, again, like ``Hammer and
Scorecard,'' some of these claims of malicious algorithms, and
they were pretty straightforward to debunk in the early days,
but they continue to this day.
There is confusion being sown about how election machines
are used, how they fit into the process. Even now, in Michigan
right now, with Antrim County, there was a forensics audit done
on some of the machines there, and there was a group that
released a report. It is a 22-page report. I looked at it, and
others have looked at it, and to me, it implies that those
systems are compromised and not dependable and you cannot trust
the votes and any other of the machines across the State.
I was a little concerned about that, and I looked at the
report, and it claims that there was a 60-percent error rate in
the machines, the election management systems. So, again, I dug
into that, and it makes the claim that then, 68 percent of the
votes cast are, therefore, not dependable. I have seen those
claims being repeated on social media by the campaign, by the
President.
I wanted to understand what that was all about. I looked at
it, and, in fact, it was not that there were 68 percent of the
votes that were errors. It was that the election management
system's logs had recorded 68 percent of the logs themselves
had some sort of alert rate. That is being used to spin that
that machine is not trustworthy. But the problem is the report
itself does not actually specify any of those errors except for
one, and it is on page 20, and it says, ``There is no
permission to bracket zero bracket, and that is being claimed
to mean that somebody tried to get into the machine and wipe
the records.
I looked at that, and I said, OK, I do not know if it
actually says that, and something jumped out at me, having
worked at Microsoft, that these are Windows-based machines. The
election management system is a Windows-based machine, and the
election management system is coded with a programming language
called ``C#.'' ``There is no permission to bracket zero
bracket'' is a place holder for a parameter, so it may be that
it is just not good coding, but that certainly does not mean
that somebody tried to get in there and zero. They
misinterpreted the language in what they saw in their forensic
audit. And that is just one example. And Commissioner Palmer, I
am sure can talk to us about whether there is a HAVA 90-day
safe harbor rule or which of the Voluntary Voting System
Guidelines (VVSGs) is applicable to those machines and whether
that machine--so I am seeing these reports that are factually
inaccurate continue to be promoted. That is what rumor control
is all about. That is what I am continuing to do today based on
my experience and understanding and how these systems work. We
have to stop this. It is undermining confidence in democracy.
Senator Hassan. I thank you so much for that statement.
Mr. Chair, I will note that a couple of other people have
gone a little bit over their time, and I have one more question
for Mr. Krebs, and with your indulgence I would like to ask it.
Chairman Johnson. [Presiding.] Sure.
Senator Hassan. Director Krebs, I thank you for that
response. I think it is a very important example of the kind of
disinformation and spinning that is happening that, frankly,
puts confidence at risk and puts some of our people at risk.
You have noted in the past that we have a very diffuse
election system that is administered at the local level. At
individual polling locations, there are often numerous
nonpartisan officials involved in administering a community's
voting process. That diffusion of responsibility also makes it
extremely unlikely that there would be a single point of
failure or fraud that could sway an election.
Director Krebs, you have worked with the numerous election
officials across State and local governments. Can you speak to
how the diffuse nature of our election systems affects the
security of our elections? And just also, in the interest of
time, I want you to comment to, sadly, some of these
nonpartisan officials at the local level have been subjected to
harassment and even death threats. So can you speak to the
impact of these threats? And do you think the President and his
allies have done enough to condemn the threats of violence?
Mr. Krebs. I am not aware of much in terms of condemning
the threats of violence, having been a recipient of some of
them. I think it is, again, an affront to democracy that the
citizens of the United States of America that are responsible
for executing this sacred democratic institution of elections
are being threatened on a daily basis. I mean, you name it,
whether it is emails, whether it is phone calls, whether it is
people showing up at your house. This is not an America I
recognize, and it has to stop. We need everyone across the
leadership ranks to stand up.
I would appreciate more support from my own party, the
Republican Party, to call this stuff out and end it. We have to
move on. We have a President-elect in President-elect Biden. We
have to move on. These officials that are Republicans--look at
Georgia: Brad Raffensperger, Gabriel Sterling, Geoff Duncan.
These are Republicans that are putting country over party. They
are being subjected to just horrific threats as a result. This
is not America.
Senator Hassan. Thank you, Mr. Krebs. Thank you, Mr. Chair,
for your indulgence. Mr. Krebs, thank you for your patriotism.
Chairman Johnson. Thanks, Senator Hassan.
Senator Scott went to vote, so is Senator Rosen available?
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN
Senator Rosen. Yes, I am here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning to all the witnesses here today.
I want to start out by saying, as Members of Congress, we
take an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all
enemies, foreign and domestic. We have a responsibility to our
constituents and our Nation to defend our democratic process.
With that being said, Mr. Krebs, we thank you for your
service to our Nation and for upholding your oath to defend the
Constitution from foreign and domestic threats. Your efforts to
protect the integrity of our democratic process help ensure
that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history,
as certified by the Department of Homeland Security.
I would also publicly like to thank Nevada's election
workers who, despite Mr. Binnall's comments in the media and
here today, worked long hours to ensure that Nevada's elections
were free, fair, and secure. Both our Republican Secretary of
State and our Democratic Attorney General have stated there is
no evidence of widespread voter fraud that occurred in Nevada,
and our highest court has said the same, and I will not give
this false narrative about my State any more attention than it
has already, unfortunately, received.
However, we do know that foreign adversaries like Russia
have peddled false narratives. On September 3, the Department
of Homeland Security warned that Russia has been spreading
disinformation about the integrity of U.S. elections since
March. This evidence is alarming. According to Alethea Group,
ahead of the election Russian media sources like RT and Sputnik
were already pushing the narrative that the United States would
not conduct free and fair elections. Last month, the Election
Integrity Partnership found that social media accounts tied to
Russian Internet Agency amplified claims of election fraud
leading up to the 2020 election.
Mr. Krebs, to reiterate, were there any election systems
successfully hacked by foreign adversaries in the 2020
election?
Mr. Krebs. Ma'am, having been out of the job now for 5
weeks or so, based on what I understood when I left, I am not
aware of any voting machine involved in the casting or counting
of votes in this election or the certification process that was
accessed by a foreign adversary.
Senator Rosen. Thank you. I want to just emphasize the
difference between election interference and influence. So we
know our election infrastructure was secure from interference.
I want to turn to the issue of foreign influence campaigns. In
your view, did adversaries succeed in amplifying the false
perception our election process was fraudulent? Can you explain
how domestic actors amplified foreign disinformation campaigns
and how that undermines confidence in our democratic process?
Mr. Krebs. I think what we saw--I believe it was October
22--we did see some Iranian efforts. I have talked about this
before where there were some emails that popped up on that day
claiming to be purportedly from at least the Proud Boys that
were talking about--sent specifically to Democratic voters that
said, ``You need to change your registration and vote for
President Trump. If you do not, we will find you and take care
of business,'' I guess.
The issue there is that ballot secrecy is the law in all 50
States, and so we identified that issue, we isolated it, and
then put up a rumor control debunker. In the meantime, in the
ensuing 27 hours, we were able to determine that that was, in
fact, an Iranian operation, and I think what was one of the
true success stories of the Protect 2020 effort and defending
democracy this time around was the fact that rather than, 4
months, in 27 hours we went from detection to sharing that
information with the American people.
There is one element that does not get a lot of play,
though. Prior to making that assessment, following up on my
commitment to our partners in the State and local election
community, we held a call with the Election Commissions and
said, look, this is what we are seeing, you need to know this,
and then we went to the public.
Senator Rosen. Mr. Krebs, I just have about 2\1/2\ minutes
left, so I would like to yield the rest of my time to you,
because you did take an oath to uphold the Constitution when
you were sworn in as Director of CISA, and so I want you to
address anything that you feel we have not already asked today
and give you an opportunity to speak in the last 2\1/2\
minutes, please.
Mr. Krebs. Thank you for that courtesy. Look, I could not
be more proud of my team at CISA for the work they did, not
just protecting the 2020 election, but in getting through the
last 9 months of all the stresses that COVID placed on the
workforce and coming to work each day, whether they are sitting
at home, out in the field, or the limited folks that came into
the office. So that is point one.
Point two is I firmly believe that this Protect 2020
effort, working with our partners in the Federal Government,
whether it was in the intelligence community or the Department
of Defense, was the single best representation of a unified
government effort. Everybody got it. There were no turf wars.
There was no parochialism. Everybody was on the same page. So
we were defending democracy.
The last thing I will say is that the real heroes here at
the State and local election workers out there across the
country, the hundreds of thousands of election workers that
risked their lives--and that is not a joke, right? There is a
global pandemic. There is COVID spreading across the country.
They went to work so that you and I could go vote and cast our
decisions here contribute to this process. They had to deal
with incredibly adversity. And then at the end of it, risking
their lives, they get death threats for doing their jobs, for
standing up and speaking truth to power, putting country over
party.
That has to end. We are going to have to move past this
somehow. I have said before that democracy, yes, we survived
this, I think. It was strong enough to survive. But democracy
in general is fragile. It requires commitment, follow-through
on both sides. If a party fails to participate in the process
and instead undermines the process, we risk losing that
democracy. We have to come back together as a country.
Senator Rosen. Again, I thank you for being here. I thank
you and your teams, your teams around the country, for keeping
us safe and working so hard in this past election.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Rosen.
Senator Scott is not back yet. Senator Portman, are you on
Webex?
[No response.]
Senator Hawley, are you on Webex?
[No response.]
I will try Senator Sinema.
[No response.]
Then, I will pick up the slack.
Mr. Binnall, I want to explore a little bit further in
terms of what access you did not have to the information you
requested to verify this. Again, I value the paper backups. I
value the controls. But they are only as good as they are
actually used, and they only provide confidence to the extent
that it is a transparent process. So just speak a little bit to
what you had access to, what you did not have access to, what
you were denied, and then go ahead.
Mr. Binnall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The very sad fact is
that we were denied access to almost anything meaningful that
would allow us to verify----
Chairman Johnson. Can you be specific?
Mr. Binnall. Absolutely, Senator. Let us talk about the
paper backups on the electronic machines. We were denied any
access to those except for from one machine in the entire State
of Nevada. We were denied that access--I wish I could have
quoted Mr. Krebs when we were fighting our discovery fights in
Nevada, saying how important it was to get access to these. We
could not see any paper backups, and on top of that, the
printers on the machine were malfunctioning at such a high
rate, we doubt that the paper backups were actually giving us
anything of use anyhow. So these paper backups that are
supposed to provide such transparency, we could not use them,
we could not see them. They provided us zero transparency at
all, except on one machine in the entire State of Nevada.
Another example is the fact that we were denied any
meaningful discovery in the case in order to go and examine the
full extent of the voter fraud. For instance, even when we were
able to subpoena the records that led us to discover those
4,000 noncitizens who voted, we could not put that into
evidence because we did not get them until the end of the
discovery period, and then the court said, well, at that point
it is too late. Our discovery period was essentially 3 days. We
were denied any meaningful opportunity to even use in our case
the information that we got, and the court did not even
consider those things, unfortunately.
We were denied--we tried to be able to understand the code
of these machines, to be able to find out, for instance, as the
Chairman pointed out, whether machines were hooked up to the
Internet, whether any of that happened, be able to do a
forensic review. We brought forensic experts all the way to
Nevada, people that could have discovered this information,
people that could have told us what happened with these
machines, and we were not allowed near them. We were not
allowed any forensic audit of it, nothing that could have given
us any transparency, because transparency is not political.
That is what we have talked about here. That is what we were
denied in Nevada, is any attempt to actually find out what
happened.
Here is the troubling thing. One of the reasons that they
said that we could not get transparency on those machines was
because they are proprietary, the information, the coding was
proprietary. But we are talking about the counting of votes for
the Office of the President of the United States, and they are
not going to let us see the code for how they actually coded
the votes? You have to pick one. It is either open-sources and
we exactly know the way that these machines are counting the
votes, or you have to go back to a verifiable system to make
sure that the results that are being reported are the results
that we get from actual voters, because that is where democracy
breaks down. That is really the fear that we have of losing
democracy, is when it is not the people's votes that are being
counted but fraud that is being counted. We cannot just pretend
that the emperor has any clothes if he does not. We cannot
pretend that we have a clean election when there is evidence to
the contrary. The way that we get that is through transparency,
and we were denied that in Nevada at every single turn.
We had a clerk, a register of voters, who literally dodged
our subpoenas. We had the holiday weekend over Thanksgiving in
order to serve subpoenas. They locked the doors of the offices.
He locked himself in his house. He refused to accept a
subpoena. That same register of voters, we have a whistleblower
that says he was wearing a Biden-Harris pin to inspect voter
sites. This is not something where we are trying to attack
officials. We are trying to say that we have to make sure that
it is nonpartisan, that we have to make sure that there is
transparency, and you cannot deny transparency at every turn,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Krebs, real quick, mindful that,
again, all this testimony is under oath, so what you heard from
Mr. Binnall is testimony under oath, does that trouble you? In
your assessment, this was the most secure election. Again, I am
all for paper backups. I am all for those controls. If used, it
works. We have a system of advocacy in terms of a legal system.
You advocate for one side. It is a combative system, but both
sides have to have information. Does that trouble you in terms
of lack of transparency that Mr. Binnall is testifying to under
oath?
Mr. Krebs. I think a couple things here. One is that in
Commissioner Palmer's opening statement he talked about the
certification process, the voluntary voting systems guides, the
certifications that happen at the State level, the logic and
accuracy testing of these machines, the parallel testing that
happens the day of or during the election process, the sampling
and forensic audits. We saw Georgia do that with a number of
their machines to ensure that the hashes match what they
expected.
I do think that, yes, we need to make sure that, working
with these vendors, we have the appropriate insight and
transparency into the process, certainly. I think we need to
have a conversation on what the appropriate auditing process
looks like. I have seen some auditing that is not necessarily
up to snuff, so we need to explore that a little bit more
fully. But, again, if we are talking about paper backups, but
we are also talking about paper ballots----
Chairman Johnson. But, again, only if he just said they did
not have access to the ballots.
Mr. Krebs. I am not--that is----
Chairman Johnson. Again, all I am asking, does that trouble
you that there was not that kind of transparency? Or are you
challenging his testimony?
Mr. Krebs. Oh, of course not. I do not have----
Chairman Johnson. OK. So, again, this system is--we only
have confidence in it if it is completely transparent and
somebody who is challenging results has access to the
information, the paper ballot backup, can have their forensic
experts take a look at the computer systems. That was not
afforded. I am just asking: Does that concern you?
Mr. Krebs. I think that there are multiple controls in
place throughout the system. If there is a legal mechanism at
the back end that allows for independent third-party auditing--
--
Chairman Johnson. But that is the problem. The legal system
did not allow for the transparency. OK. You can talk about all
these controls up front, but then in the end, where there are
affidavits signed and people are making charges, when you
cannot obtain the evidence to actually try it in court and your
evidence is denied in court, do you understand how that
frustrates people? Again, that is the problem. That is why
there are suspicions, because this was not in so many cases
that we have heard about a transparent process.
With that, I will turn to Senator Scott.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SCOTT
Senator Scott. Thank you, Chairman Johnson. I want to thank
Chairman Johnson for taking all the heat for hosting a hearing
like this. I think it is the right thing to do, to make people
feel comfortable that their elections are free and fair, and if
this one was not, that the next one will be.
Two years ago, I got elected. I won election night by
54,000 votes, and Chuck Schumer sent a lawyer down and
basically said, ``I do not care what the votes are. We are
going to win through the courts.'' We went through an
unbelievable number of lawsuits. We had, I think, something
like 1,000 lawyers working with us. We went through two
recounts. He did not care what the votes were. Chuck Schumer's
goal was to win, and his lawyer's goal was just to win through
the courts, and it did not matter what the votes were. He did
not let me come to orientation, and so when I watch this stuff
now, I do not remember one Democrat in this entire country say,
``That is not right. You should not be doing it that way.''
They were all in on this, and nobody complained.
We have to figure out how to do this where people feel
comfortable. I can tell you, I live in Naples, Florida. Every
time I go out, people come up to me and they are frustrated
with the unfairness of the system.
Now, of course, these are people that wanted Trump to win.
They think that he lost unfairly. But they are mad. They are
mad because they read and they hear about what happened in
Wisconsin; they hear about what happened in other States. Then
they are sort of furious that they think the whole system is
rigged.
So one thing I did is in September I put out a bill called
``the Voter Act.'' We do absentee ballots, and it actually
works in Florida. You have to be a registered voter. Your
signatures have to match. You have to get your vote in, ask
where you vote early. You have to get your vote in on time. It
is your problem if you do not. It is not somebody else's. You
do not get to vote after the fact. Your vote does not get to
come in after the fact and somebody count it, although 2 years
ago the Democrat lawyers tried to do that. And in Florida we do
it on time. We did it this time.
So it seems to me that if we want people to feel
comfortable in this country that these elections are fair, you
have to show your ID. You cannot be doing same-day registration
because how can you tell if somebody is legal, illegal? How
would you know? Do they live in that State? How would you know?
You have to let people be able to watch ballots being opened.
We had two election supervisors that were removed because of
what they did in my election. They were clear. They completely
violated the law, and they found and tried to count 95,000
ballots after election night--not in my favor. Of course, in
the Democrat's favor.
Judge Starr, what do you think about the need to have local
elections--because I think what Mr. Krebs said is right. One of
the reasons why we have good systems here is we do not have a
national system. We have a local system. But should we have
national standards? Should you have to have ID? Should your
signatures have to match? You cannot get registered on the same
day that you vote. All these things that we have, like we do in
Florida, where you have to get your ballots early and all these
things and you know how many--and, by the way, you are supposed
to announce how many ballots you have that night. You should
know, right? They did not in mine, and that is how they kept
finding it.
Judge Starr, what do think about this idea that we have to
have some national standards but still have local elections?
Mr. Starr. I think national standards need to be seriously
considered in light of these recurring issues. We all have
anecdotes. One of my friends, an academic leader in the
Commonwealth of Virginia where I used to live--here is an
anecdote. One of his students, a registered voter in Vermont,
but she is studying in Virginia, and she receives,
appropriately, an absentee ballot from Vermont. But she
receives four unsolicited ballots from the Commonwealth of
Virginia where she happens to not be registered to vote, but
she receives these, and everyone is hearing these anecdotes.
They are saying, well, aren't there control mechanisms in
place? The issue with decentralization is you will continue to
have these varieties and vagaries unless and until there is
some enormous reforms in State government or Congress using its
powers under Article I in this particular instance, says we
need to step in and have regulations to ensure integrity. The
signature requirement is one of the bases.
I like to say, Senator Scott, you have to show ID if you
want to check into a hotel or get through Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) security, so do we not want to
have those kinds of safeguards just to ensure, yes, this is
going to be an honest election, which I think is what we are
all asking for.
Senator Scott. Mr. Binnall, if we had done some of these
things and they had been enforced in your State, would people
feel comfortable that there was a fair election?
Mr. Binnall. Senator Scott, I think it would absolutely go
miles to make sure that people were confident in the results of
the election if we put in simple methods to make sure that the
people who vote are who they suppose to be, that one person
only gets one vote, that the way that the ballots are counted
leads to an accurate total. These things should not be
partisan. These things should be exactly what we do to protect
our republic and make it so that people know that the results
are accurate because, otherwise, you end up where we are today.
Mr. Troupis. Senator, one of the fascinating things about
Wisconsin is, as I said, we have a long history of real
transparency in our process, in our recount process, in all of
our processes. So it is particularly odd here--and several of
the justices on our court this last week called what the
Democrats had done in the majority of the court, in the Supreme
Court, as absurd and bizarre, and the reason they referred to
it that way is they said the issue here is what confidence do
people have in the election process. If that is what we hear--
and I have heard that--I have been hearing that all day here,
confidence in the election process. Why, when everything is
teed up--I mean, I am a former judge. My co-counsel is a former
president of the State bar. We had teed up everything. We
absolutely knew the names, addresses, wards. You have exact
records. What the Biden campaign did not want the court to do
is to actually address the substantive question. That is the
holding of the court: We will not address the substantive
question.
The chief justice, I mean, there was great frustration in
the chief justice when she said four members of this court
throw the cloak of laches over numerous problems that will be
repeated again and again until this court has the courage to
correct them. Candidly, it was all Democrat talking points. I
mean, the same thing, I heard something about Justice
Karofsky's comment. It was just a talking point. I guess the
frustration you hear from those of us who are serious lawyers,
who have taken this seriously, is that when we pose these
matters to courts, we expect them to address them. When they do
not, it undermines the integrity of our system. That is what is
going on here. The frustration that you hear even in good
Democrat circles is if the courts do not address these, who is
going to? Are they not the ultimate arbiters?
There is no dispute that the election would have turned out
differently in Wisconsin if, according to our allegations and
according to our proofs, the court accepted those, that the
election result would be different. But instead of addressing
the substantive claims, the Biden campaign argues do not talk
about them, do not address them. That is why I thanked Senator
Johnson when he first called and asked if I would talk, because
if you do not inquire here in the Senate--and as Ken Starr said
a minute ago, if you do not do this inquiry, there really is
not going to be any analysis, and there is not going to be an
opportunity to get the very integrity that we all want.
As I said, as a former judge--and this is a serious matter
to me, and no one suggested at any point in the process that
the allegations in Wisconsin are anything but serious and
substantive and documented. And yet a court takes the Biden
line and says, ``We are just not going to talk about it.'' That
is just wrong, and that is the reason, one of the reasons
people do not trust this outcome.
Senator Scott. In Florida, we have a lot of people that
moved from South America, and so a lot of them have said to me,
``How is this different than what Maduro is doing?'' Right? I
mean, and part of it is, people do not have enough information,
but it is so simplistic when you hear about people that are
dead that vote, people that do not live in the State that vote,
and you hear all these things, and there is no recourse.
We have to figure this out. We have to be able to prevent
this from--I do not know if anything will happen with this
election, but clearly we cannot let this go on for the next
election.
Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Scott, and I
completely agree. You have to have the information. This is not
a dangerous hearing. This is an incredibly important and
crucial hearing. Thank you for participating in it.
Senator Portman, are you available by Webex?
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN
Senator Portman. I am, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I have been
moving around the Capitol as we have had to vote, but I was at
the hearing earlier, and I appreciate the witnesses and all the
information we have received.
As I look at this issue and even watch some of the back-
and-forth today between our colleagues, it seems to me that
pulling this out of politics a little bit and having a
bipartisan group that is more independent look at the issue is
a good idea, in part because most of us do not believe that
this ought to be something that the Federal Government usurps
from the States. In fact, we believe that the Constitution got
it right and that, generally speaking, it is better to have the
States handle this. But there are obviously many disparities
between how the States do it.
So there was discussion earlier, I think it was, of the
Carter-Baker Commission. I would ask you, Mr. Starr, is it time
for us to establish a commission--I have been involved in some
of these commissions. I have been a commissioner and co-chaired
some that have worked, some that have not worked. But often
they can be quite effective at sort of taking the partisan
poison out of an issue and addressing it in a very
straightforward way. If you had a distinguished Democrat and a
distinguished Republican and commissioners who were dedicated
to increasing the confidence in our elections, do you think now
is the time for us to establish such a commission that could
report with plenty of time before the next midterm election and
help to give the States a sense of direction and perhaps even a
template of best practices?
Mr. Starr. The short answer is yes. In light of the
acrimony and the division with respect to the 2000 election,
bringing together Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State
Baker was, I think, very efficacious. They made thoughtful
recommendations. But they bring attention and shed light on
what the issues are. And so, yes, I think taking it out of what
is clearly continuing to be a highly bitter and acrimonious
discussion and to say to the American people we are going to
take a look at this and we are going to try to, in fact,
improve in the great spirit of reform, we want honest
elections. Abraham Lincoln, the subject of the fraudulent mail-
in campaign. Let us not lose sight, even though I am thankful
that foreign interference and so forth--and I very much admire
Mr. Krebs and all that. But we are really talking about down in
the boiler room, so to speak, of American elections, and that
is where I think these reforms and safeguards need to be put in
place.
Senator Portman. Thank you for that, and I am looking
forward to working with one of my Democratic colleagues to try
to promote this idea. We have had some discussions of it
already, and I think again today what we have heard is
indicative of the degree of intensity on this issue and the
need for free and fair elections. I think everybody agrees with
secure elections, absolutely, and you mentioned, Mr. Krebs--
Chris, thank you for your service at CISA. I agree with what
was said earlier about the fact that during your time there you
were instrumental in building up our defenses on the
cybersecurity side. Particularly thank you for working with
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose so well. Frank LaRose and
you I think were able to provide some examples for other
States, as I understand it. You can speak to that. But we have
in every county in Ohio the so-called Albert intrusion
detection monitoring hardware, which is designed to detect
suspicious cyber activity. Can you kind of brief me on the
benefits of using this kind of detection and monitoring
hardware and how it worked?
Mr. Krebs. Yes, sir. First off, I want to thank you for--
actually just the State of Ohio, for some reason in my senior
staff in my front office, two of my top three advisers happened
to be from Ohio, so you are doing something right there.
The Albert systems are intrusion----
Senator Portman. I am going to put on my mask, after you
said that, since Carper had his Ohio mask on earlier.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Krebs. So the Albert systems are intrusion detection
systems that effectively sit on the networks and on the wire
that capture traffic, that we can work with our intelligence
community partners and develop what is known as ``signatures,''
looking for known malicious activity or known interaction with
suspicious Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, just looking for
bad interaction, and it gives us a good insight into what sort
of behaviors may be happening on those networks, and they are
actually pretty key after the 2016 election. Once we were able
to get a sense of what was happening in Illinois, we could load
up some of those signatures and then go do forensics.
It is a passive system. It is a forensic system. Where we
need to go, though, is building on the trust we have developed
through the Albert censors and through the Information Sharing
and Analysis Center (ISAC) and through the Coordinating
Councils to start deploying more advanced technologies. I am
specifically talking about some of the endpoint detection and
response capabilities that will actually sit on a computer in a
State and local office and be more of a real-time monitoring
and mitigation capability. That is how we continue moving
forward. We need the same capability in the Federal Government.
We are not there yet, but we have to continue advancing, and I
think Congress needs--I will stop there.
Senator Portman. Chris, yes, and again, as you know, you
and I have talked about this. I appreciate what you did for
elections. I also am very concerned that our Federal Government
is not up to the task generally, and that is another topic for
another hearing, perhaps one where you will be back to testify.
But look at what has happened just recently. In the last week,
we found out that a very sophisticated group of hackers got
into the computers of some our most sensitive agencies, and so
we obviously have a lot of work to do. I am not suggesting that
CISA was at fault there, but on the other hand, I think we have
not yet given even CISA the adequate resources and authority to
be able to handle all these issues, not just the election
issues, but obviously we have a huge problem right now with
cyber attacks. We do not know all the details yet, and I will
not ask you to get into stuff you do not know about. But it was
a massive cyber attack on Federal agencies that undercut our
national security. We know that.
By the way, Senator Paul earlier talked about the fact that
there has been some lack of understanding between what you
testified to and what you stated as to the election being
secure from cyber attacks and this notion that there were not
instances of irregularity and fraud in this election, which, of
course, there have been in every election in the history of our
country, and there were in this election, and we have heard
about some of those today.
Is Senator Paul correct? I guess I would slightly amend
what he said. He said that your focus was just on foreign
adversaries. My sense is your focus was not just on foreign
adversaries, although you feel fairly confident that that did
not happen this time, and obviously based on what happened in
2016 with the Russians, this is good news, but also with regard
to domestic cyber attacks. Is that what your report was about?
Is he accurate in saying that?
Mr. Krebs. Yes, sir, so when you come into a Federal
office, you pledge the oath to uphold and defend the
Constitution from threats, foreign and domestic, and that is
what we did. The focus of the statement, the joint statement,
was security. It was secure. I think terms have been conflated
here, alleging that we were speaking to the fraud aspect. We
absolutely were not. We were talking about security, hacking,
manipulation of these machines. That was the thrust of the
statement.
Senator Portman. I think that is very important to point
out, and I think a number of people were confused about that,
including, perhaps, some folks in the administration. Post-
election, there has been a lot of talk about signature
matching, and I will end with this, Mr. Chairman. I know we are
getting over time here. But in Ohio, what we do is--and we have
been doing this for 15 years quite successfully--we send out an
application for an absentee ballot. It is no-fault absentee.
That is how I vote. But you have to send in an application,
including a signature. Those signatures are checked. Then the
signature on the actual ballot, once you receive the ballot and
you send that in, you have another signature, that is checked.
Of course, the two are compared.
They also in Ohio have access to other signatures if there
is some confusion as to whether it might be the right person or
not. Could you, Mr. Krebs or others, perhaps comment on that
system? Is that a good way to ensure that you have the
protection that we all want to have that the person who
requested the ballot is an eligible voter and that the return
ballot was completed by that same person?
Mr. Krebs. Not an expert on the system. Seems reasonable to
me.
Senator Portman. Anybody else want to comment on that?
Mr. Ryan. Sir, this is Representative Frank Ryan. I would
tell you that that is a good system, and that would alleviate a
significant number of the concerns that I had in the election.
Based on some of the comments that were made by many of the
Senators and the testifiers, I would indicate that we saw a
major problem with the dot-com bubble in 2001, which led to the
Sarbanes-Oxley bill, much of which is the basis of my testimony
today. In 2008 and 2009, we had the crisis that happened in the
banking industry with the no-documentation loans, and we saw
how that worked and then led to the Dodd-Frank bill. I would
hope that would happen in the 2000 elections and in the Abraham
Lincoln election and these most recent ones in 2016 and 2020.
There would be similar legislation that could help us restore
the confidence that people have that there is some degree of
uniform perspective about the requirements that each of the
States need to be able to comply with. What Ohio is doing would
have alleviated a major amount of the concerns I had when we
had a Supreme Court that decided to legislate from the bench.
Mr. Starr. Mr. Chairman, if I may say just a word, and that
is, I think what, Senator Portman, you have identified is a
best practice, and it certainly qualifies as one of the things
that perhaps a commission, if one if founded, could say we have
canvassed the entire 50 States, and here are the best
practices. The recommendations could be based on experience as
opposed to simply theoretical constructs. Let us just see what
has worked in the various States with reputations for honesty
and integrity.
Senator Portman. Yes, that would be the objective. Thank
you, Mr. Starr. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your
indulgence.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY
Senator Hawley. [Presiding.] Thank you very much, Senator
Portman.
Now, on behalf of the Chairman, I am going to recognize
myself, so thanks to the witnesses for being here. I just want
to say how important it is that we are having today's hearing,
and let me just give you an example why.
Yesterday I was talking with some of the constituents back
at home, a group of about 30 people. Every single one of them,
every one of them, told me that they felt they had been
disenfranchised, that their votes did not matter, that the
election had been rigged. These are normal, reasonable people.
These are not crazy people. These are reasonable people and
who, by the way, have been involved in politics, they have won,
they have lost, they have seen it all. These are normal folks
living normal lives who firmly believe that they have been
disenfranchised. And to listen to the mainstream press and
quite a few voices in this building tell them after 4 years of
non-stop Russia hoax, it was hoax, it was based on--the whole
Russian nonsense was based on, we now know, lies from a Russian
spy. The Steele dossier was based on a Russian spy. After 4
years of that, being told that the last election was fake and
that Donald Trump was not really elected, and that Russia
intervened, after 4 years of that, now these same people are
told, ``You just sit down and shut up. If you have any concerns
about election integrity, you are nut case. You should shut
up.''
I will tell you what. Seventy-four million Americans are
not going to shut up, and telling them that their views do not
matter and that their concerns do not matter and they should
just be quiet is not a recipe for success in this country. It
is not a recipe for the unity that I hear now the other side is
suddenly so interested in after years of trying to delegitimize
President Donald Trump.
Suffice it to say I am not too keen on lectures about how
Missourians and others who voted for President Trump and now
have some concerns about fraud, about integrity, about
compliance with the law should just be quiet and that they are
somehow not patriotic if they raise these questions. It is
absolutely unbelievable.
Let me talk about the First Amendment. Judge Starr, I want
to begin with you because I know that you have spent much of
your life as a litigator defending the First Amendment. Have
you ever seen anything like we saw in the closing days of the
election when you had the biggest corporations in the history
of this country, the most powerful corporations in the world--
Facebook, Twitter--working with the Democrat campaign to
suppress legitimate reporting on Hunter Biden, who we now know
is under Federal investigation for criminal wire fraud, tax
evasion, other things? Have you ever seen anything in your
career like that, Judge Starr, where we have these giant
corporate conglomerates censoring and suppressing news directly
bearing on an election weeks beforehand and doing it apparently
in conjunction with one of the major political parties? Have
you ever seen anything like that?
Mr. Starr. No. I think we live in a new age, and we need to
go back to great lessons from constitutional law, as you well
know, Senator Hawley, and Justice William Brennan, an icon of
the Warren Court, saying that our democracy is based upon
robust and uninhibited debate, and Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes saying let us test things in the marketplace of ideas.
You cannot test ideas and theories unless you allow the
marketplace of information, communication, to flourish.
Senator Hawley. Well said. I agree with that 100 percent.
It is an extraordinary thing not to be able to get--I have had
Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg under oath. We have asked them,
``Did you coordinate with the Democrat campaign?'' How was it
that within minutes of this story breaking, both of those major
corporate giants decided that they would suppress this story
and exactly what the Biden campaign wanted them to do? They
will not answer questions. I have asked the Federal Election
Commission (FEC) to determine whether or not this was an
illegal campaign contribution on the part of these corporate
entities, and I just cannot fathom why anybody who cares about
free speech in this country would be fine with these mega
corporations controlling what people can and cannot say and
trying to intervene in a Presidential election.
Let me ask you, Judge Starr, about something else. Let us
talk a little bit about mail-in balloting. In your written
testimony, you discuss the findings of the Carter-Baker
Commission, and you have mentioned that again here today. That
Commission commented on the use of mail-in ballots after the
2000 election. Can you tell us a little bit about that
Commission's finding on mail-in ballots as you recall it and
talk about some of the warnings that that Commission put into
place?
Mr. Starr. Yes. The Commission was referring to absentee
ballots, but, of course, in light of what has happened in this
Presidential election, we are now talking about the
unprecedented use of mail-in ballots. Their concern and their
warning, former President Carter and Secretary of State Baker,
is that this is a mechanism or a platform for fraud and abuse.
Be careful about it. Have safeguards in place. I think that is
at the bottom of what some of these concerns are.
How did dead people vote, accepting that allegation from
Nevada? It is because of inadequate safeguards. The dead person
did not walk into the voting booth and vote. Someone voted for
him or her. We have to have those safeguards in place, and that
is what the Commission was saying and issuing that fervent
warning, that it may get worse in a deeply divided country.
Senator Hawley. Twenty-six States, as I understand it, when
it comes to mail-in voting, Judge, 26 States now in this
country allow third-party ballot harvesting of mail-in votes.
That is where you can pay a third party to go distribute the
ballots, and you cannot do this in my home State of Missouri
because we have controls similar to those in Ohio that Senator
Portman was talking about. But in other States, 26 States, you
can pay a third party to go distribute the ballots. You can pay
a third party to pick up the ballots. There is no chain of
custody there. There is no verification. This seems to me an
invitation to fraud and abuse.
I have introduced legislation to end third-party ballot
harvesting nationwide, to make it illegal nationwide. Would you
agree, Judge Starr, that looking at something like third-party
ballot harvesting is a common-sense approach? By the way, some
House Democrats even have endorsed this approach. Would you
agree with me that that is a common-sense place to start when
we think about preventing fraud and addressing it in our
elections?
Mr. Starr. Yes, because the opportunity for fraud and abuse
is so rife and omnipresent with that kind of, if I may now call
it, ``worst practice.'' So many States have best practices. We
heard from Senator Portman about Ohio. Other States have the
safeguards in place. Let us put safeguards in place, but one of
them is let us eliminate practices that are so prone to fraud
and abuse.
Senator Hawley. I think that is just the very beginning of
what we should do. We should also make sure that poll watchers
from both parties can be present at all times, that there are
eyes on ballots, cameras on ballots at all times, that there
are significant verification requirements that are mandatory,
that there is mandatory reporting requirements about where we
are in the count, where the States are, so the States just
cannot go dark for days at a time. All of this stuff ought to
be common sense. There is no reason we should just shrug our
shoulders and say, ``Fraud happens all the time. No big deal.''
It is a very big deal, and for millions and millions of
Americans in this election, it is a very big deal indeed.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. [Presiding.] Thank you, Senator Hawley,
for your questions and for standing in.
Based on one question and the answer from Judge Starr, I
just want to read from my opening statement from the last
hearing: ``In his `Reflections on Progress, Peaceful
Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom,' Russian dissident
Andrei D. Sakharov wrote, `The second basic thesis is that
intellectual freedom is essential to human society--freedom to
obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and
unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and
prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only
guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which,
in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be
transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the
only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic
approach to politics, economics and culture.'''
I would like to think that this hearing is a demonstration
of that freedom to obtain and distribute information to the
public. There is nothing dangerous about that. It is essential
to our freedom. It is essential to our country, to our
democratic republic, and it is essential if we are going to
restore confidence in this election system we have. We have to
do this. We cannot ignore the problem. The first step in
solving any problem is admitting you have one and then dealing
with it honestly, gathering the information. This hearing, as
my hearings have been, has been a problem-solving process,
first gathering the information. That is what we are trying to
do here today. Senator Sinema.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SINEMA
Senator Sinema. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
The 2020 Arizona election was a successful election, not
for any one party or individual but for our democracy, and it
is a demonstration of the will of Arizona voters. A record 80
percent of registered voters participated. Arizonans are
independent. They vote for State and Federal representatives
they trust to be honest, who they believe will fight for and
uphold Arizona values.
This record turnout number is also a testament to the work
of Arizona election officials who not ensured our system worked
and our laws were upheld, but did so while ensuring that people
could safely participate in the election during the pandemic as
voters and volunteers.
Arizona has had some sort of absentee voting by mail for
over 100 years. In 1992, the Arizona Legislature and Governor
in bipartisan fashion made it easier for Arizonans to vote by
mail by no longer requiring a reason to participate. Our vote-
by-mail system has a number of safeguards to ensure safe
elections. Ballots are mailed out 28 days prior to the
election, and each ballot has a tracking mechanism. We use
tamper-resistant envelopes, and ballot drop boxes have specific
security requirements. Election staff are trained to
authenticate signatures, and a voter is contacted if the
signature cannot be verified. Arizona also has severe criminal
penalties for ballot tampering or for throwing out someone's
ballot.
In 2018, when I was elected to the U.S. Senate, nearly 80
percent of Arizona voters voted early, most of them by mail. In
2020, that increased to 88 percent. That is 2.9 million votes
moving through the postal system in Arizona. Arizona's postal
workers put in long hours, many working 65 hours a week for
weeks on end to ensure that ballots got to voters and were
returned by State deadlines so they could be counted. Even
though many postal facilities in Arizona are short-staffed
right now, these essential workers did not shy away from the
challenge or the need to protect our democracy.
Arizonans know it takes time to count our votes and
determine election winners. When I was elected to the Senate, I
was declared the winner in 6 days, but it took 12 days to
finish counting the votes. Now, that is not an indication of
fraud. It shows that election officials are following the law
and counting all the votes. That is how elections have worked
in Arizona since our State adopted widespread mail-in voting,
and it is how things worked in Arizona again in 2020. Our
elections this year produced bipartisan results where members
of both parties won elections.
Arizona's statewide elected officials from both parties
have also confirmed that our election was fair, just, and
without fraud. Katie Hobbs, Arizona's Democratic Secretary of
State, on December 9 said this about our election: ``This
election is one for the record books, for a number of reasons.
Participation was at a historic high, as was interest in the
inner workings of this civic process, which is the kind of
scrutiny that pushes the process to be better. I have full
confidence in this election. That confidence has been affirmed
by the courts.''
On November 20, Clint Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa
County Board of Supervisors, a Republican, said: ``No matter
how you voted, this election was administered with integrity,
transparency, and, most importantly, in accordance with Arizona
State laws.''
On December 4, the Republican Speaker of the Arizona State
House, Rusty Bowers, rejected calls for the State legislature
to change the result of Arizona's election. Here is his quote:
``As a conservative Republican, I do not like the results of
the Presidential election. I voted for President Trump and
worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain
a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome
of a certified election. I and my fellow legislators swore an
oath to support the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution and
laws of the State of Arizona. It would violate that oath, the
basic principles of republican government and the rule of law
if we attempted to nullify the people's vote based on
unsupported theories of fraud.''
Challenges contesting the Arizona election were brought to
the courts and dismissed, including a unanimous ruling by the
Arizona Supreme Court confirming a lower court ruling upholding
the results of the election challenge. This is how our system
works. If there are concerns of fraud or abuse, the courts
consider the evidence and make a ruling.
Now, I have a few questions for Mr. Krebs. During your work
at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, did
you find any evidence that disputes the statements I shared
from elected officials regarding the integrity and fairness of
the 2020 election in Arizona?
Mr. Krebs. No, ma'am.
Senator Sinema. More broadly, what evidence can you offer
to support the idea that the election across the country, not
just in Arizona, was fair and secure?
Mr. Krebs. Again, it is those layered security controls
that are in place before, during, and after an election. The
thing that I always like to point back to is that increase of
paper ballots across the country and the ability to then
conduct post-election audits. In Arizona, I believe it was a 2
percent audit. In Georgia, they did a risk-limiting audit that
then triggered a full hand tally. The outcomes were consistent.
A 5-percent audit in Wisconsin, a 2 percent audit in
Pennsylvania. Those are the sorts of things that give you
confidence in the process when you can go and recount the
ballots over and over and over.
Senator Sinema. What lessons should we learn from the 2020
election as we plan for future elections?
Mr. Krebs. We need to invest in democracy. First and
foremost, we need to fully eradicate those machines that do not
have paper ballots, so those direct recording electronic
machines, there is only one State that is statewide, and that
is Louisiana, but they are throughout Texas, Indiana,
Tennessee, and a couple other States, including New Jersey. We
need to get those out of the system, so Congress needs to fully
invest in a risk-based approach to eradicate those.
We need also to continue investing in post-election audit
capabilities for the State. That takes a little bit more time.
Then a steady stream of funding and grants on a regular basis,
not every 10 years or every 4 years but, on a regular,
dependable basis, to support elections. Along the same lines,
we need to fully fund and support the Election Assistance
Commission. They are a critical tool to helping the
administration of elections.
Last--and this is my pet project here--we need to reinvest
in civics education in K through 12 throughout the country. We
have to continue educating our children on what it means to be
an American and the democracy that we are enjoying here.
Senator Sinema. Thank you. My last question: Early in this
election cycle, sites on the FBI highlighted a potential threat
that foreign elements could pose to the U.S. election system
through disinformation campaigns. Looking back, did the United
States do enough to prepare for this threat from both foreign
and domestic actors?
Mr. Krebs. Ma'am, we had the distinct advantage this time
around of having about 3\1/2\ to 4 years to prepare for this
election, and that is in comparison to the prior
administration. They only had about 4 months. We had 4 years. I
know my team, we took every moment of the day to think through
any number of scenarios. I have talked about it often that I
was paranoid, that we were looking for every angle that we
possibly could. I think that ultimately benefited us from a
preparation perspective when it came around and that we had a
full range of scenarios we had worked through, that we improved
security at the State level. But ultimately it came down to
those perception hacks. It came down to disinformation. I think
rumor control was an incredibly valuable tool that we need to
think about from a governmentwide perspective how rumor
control--I have said rumor control as a service. How can we use
rumor control to help ensure--well, rather, counter
disinformation on the vaccine for COVID as it rolls out. Those
are the sorts of things we need to be thinking about.
Senator Sinema. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I overextended my time. I yield back and
thank you for your indulgence.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Sinema, for
participating.
I do want to just warn Mr. Palmer and Mr. Ryan, first of
all, I apologize for not having maybe any questions directed
your way. I will at the tail end of this have another quick
round of questions here. Senator Peters has some. I will ask
you a couple questions. Then what I will tell all the witnesses
is a final summary--I actually got this technique from Senator
Carper. We will give you each an opportunity to make kind of a
final statement, things that either you were not asked that you
wanted to be asked about or something that you just think needs
to be said during this hearing. We will do that, but I will
first turn it over to Senator Peters for some extra questions.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A question for Mr. Krebs. As you know, you and I have
spoken about the rise of domestic extremist violence in the
country and how we need to be conscious of that rise. In
August, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security memos
reportedly warned of threats by domestic extremists to
election-related targets in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Unfortunately, and sadly, these warnings seemed to have been
well warranted.
Since President Trump's false claims of widespread voter
fraud, local election officials across the Nation have faced
harassment. Some have faced death threats against themselves
and their families. In Michigan, our Secretary of State had
protesters surround her home while she was decorating it with
her young child to get ready for Christmas. According to local
law enforcement, many of those folks were armed. They were
repeating some of the President's false allegations of
widespread fraud in an intimidating way.
After speaking out defending the integrity of the 2020
election, it is my understanding that you and your family also
faced threats. In fact, it required us to make some
arrangements for your security to be here today to testify in
person.
On December 1 of this year, a top Republican election
official, Gabriel Sterling, in the Georgia Secretary of State's
office, held a news conference urging President Trump and
Republican lawmakers to stop attacking Georgia's election
system with baseless claims of voter fraud. In that news
conference, Mr. Sterling said President Trump was, and I am
quoting Mr. Sterling here, ``inspiring people to commit
potential acts of violence,'' and that, a new quote, ``someone
is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is
going to get killed.''
Now, we saw a similar dangerous trend earlier this year
when election officials questioned COVID public health safety
protocols and also fueled extremists, including in my home
State, extremists that targeted the Governor of the State of
Michigan.
So my question for you, Mr. Krebs, particularly given the
fact that you have faced some of this: Do you believe Mr.
Sterling's statements are overstated or that, unfortunately,
real-world violence stemming from dangerous claims can indeed
be a realistic concern that we should be conscious of?
Mr. Krebs. Absolutely. He himself received a number of
threats, and he has continued to receive threats, as I
understand it. Secretary Raffensperger down there has. I have
continued to receive threats. It is not just the heads, the
principal level people, the directors of the offices. He was
having information technology (IT) contractors that were
receiving death threats.
We are seeing stoking of fires that is completely
unnecessary with claims that are, I am not even talking about
some of the court cases. I am talking about, in my case and in
many of our cases, it is these fanciful claims of dead
dictators and computer algorithms. We are debunking them
because they are nonsense, and we have said that from the
beginning. But they have taken root, and, some people just do
not want to hear how these systems actually work and what is
actually capable across these systems. Most importantly,
those--I am going to say it again. I am going say it again, the
paper ballots, it is those measures--the root of trust in the
process that can dispense with these claims; even if these
algorithms were there, they did not work. But they are probably
not there.
So we have to move past this, and these cases of threats,
they need to be prosecuted. People need to be held accountable
for the claims they are making.
Senator Peters. And just the last question, and we spoke
about this earlier. If you look at the fact that we were able
to conduct this election in a fair way, during the middle of a
pandemic, which is an extraordinary time to try to conduct fair
elections and do it as efficiently as possible, and the fact
that you have thousands of election officials and volunteers
that are working--I think of the men and women who went to the
polling places, the process voting, did it with concerns about
their health, people who went to vote, for their health, or
folks who chose to vote absentee in order to minimize the risk
to their families, to the health of their families. This is
really, in my mind, a time to celebrate a very successful
election that was done fairly, and it was done in the midst of
an extraordinary time that we are living in, and it is the
result of folks in CISA, your folks, others with Homeland
Security, folks with the FBI, and others.
Would you just comment on that as to how we should look at
what we just went through? That does not mean that we should
not be looking at ways to improve the system, to make sure that
we minimize clerical errors, to make sure that if there are
isolated incidents of fraud, that they are dealt with and they
are caught. But we should be also celebrating what just was
pulled off in this country, which is an example of how a
democratic system can work efficiently, fairly, and even do it
under extraordinary pressure.
Mr. Krebs. I absolutely agree with the earlier conversation
about the need for a national conversation about how to improve
trust in the elections. I think things I have even recommended
about eliminating the direct-recording electronic voting
machine (DRE) and having more audits available after the
election, and that is going to require, again, that policy
conversation. It is going to require investing in democracy.
But we do need to recognize the fact that this was a historic
election. We had 100 million voters by November 3. That shows
that people wanted to get out there and vote. They wanted to
participate in this process. All along we have hundreds of
thousands of election workers out there that, as you have
pointed out, as I said in my opening statement, that risked
their lives in a global pandemic to make sure that we could all
get out there and vote.
We need to support them. I have significant concerns that
the targeted violence against these election workers is going
to have a chilling effect on turnout of election workers in the
future. If there are no election workers, it is really hard to
do an election. We need to think about that and how to counter
that going forward.
Senator Peters. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters.
This was a number of times we have talked about threat and
violence against election workers, which obviously nobody on
this Committee condones at all. At all. I certainly hope there
is not an inference in all this discussion that this hearing is
going to spawn some of that. Anybody listening to this hearing,
do not engage in that. OK? I wish Senator Paul were actually
here to talk about his scrape with threats and violence in the
political realm. We are in a terrible position in this country
where you have this level of threat across the political
spectrum. Nobody should condone it, certainly not this
Committee. But that is what I think this hearing is about, is
to provide the information, talk honestly about it, take a look
at allegations. If they can be explained, take them off the
table. There is plenty, as we were doing our preparation for
this hearing, that we were able to take off the table. But that
is what this is about. This is about information, obtaining it,
the freedom to obtain it and disseminate it, information.
With that, I will turn it over to Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Again, our thanks to
our witnesses. You have been patient and been here for a long
time, those of you that are here personally and those that are
connected from afar.
I mentioned earlier I went to Ohio State. Unfortunately,
nobody in my family had ever graduated from college. I won this
Navy ROTC scholarship. I got to go to college, and the first
one in my family, I think, to graduate from college.
When I got to Ohio State, I found out there was a little
town just north of Columbus called ``Delaware,'' and so my 4
years at Ohio State, I am thinking of Delaware. I am thinking,
it is a little town just north of Columbus. Then I found out
later on it is a State. When I finished up my active duty at
the end of the Vietnam War and moved from California to
Delaware to get an Master of Business Administration (MBA), I
learned on December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first colony
to ratify the Constitution. Then 12 others followed suit, and
we ended up with a country that prevails to this day.
I am little bit of a student of history. I know we all are.
But one of the things I learned about the Framers, the
Constitutional Convention up in Philadelphia, just north of
where my wife and I live--our family lives just north of
Wilmington--is they disagreed on a bunch of stuff. Probably the
hardest thing for them to agree on, as it turns out, was should
there be a judiciary, Article II I think it is, but should
there be a judiciary, and if so, who is going to pick the
judges? And they argued and argued for days, weeks, trying to
figure it out. And somebody came up with the idea and they
finally said it should not just be the Senate, it should not
just be the House. It ought to be the President to appoint with
the advice and consent of the Senate.
And so they voted on it, and they voted it down. Whenever
they would run into an impasse up in Philadelphia, they would
bring in faith leaders to come in and pray for wisdom for our
Framers. They did that again, and they debate some more for
days, and finally somebody said, why don't we just go back to
the earlier idea and vote on it again? And they did, and they
adopted the clause that says the President shall nominate with
the advice and consent of the Senate, those who will serve
lifetime terms, rather extraordinary, our judges.
Is it a perfect solution? No. We have been wrestling for,
what, 200-and-some years figuring out what is the advice and
consent of the Senate. What does that really mean? Just in
recent months, we have been wrestling again with that.
But it is an imperfect solution to a very real challenge,
and that is that we are going to have disagreements and we are
going to have disputes that need to be resolved. This is
before--I was talking about football earlier. In baseball, they
call balls and strikes. But the Framers, they did not have
baseball to talk about, but they knew they needed somebody to
call balls and strikes and to have a system that most people
say, well, that is fair and reasonable.
We have needed judges, Federal judges and others, to be
able to call balls and strikes in all this litigation, 61
instances around the country. Sixty-one. And they have done
that, and some people like the results, and other people do
not.
I have two points to make in closing before I have to go to
another meeting. But one of those is at some point in time we
have to say enough is enough, it is time to turn the page, and
let us get about our Nation's work. Here this week, we were
just voting on the floor, and people are talking about
negotiations going on with this COVID package, addressing
climate change in ways that create jobs, all kinds of stuff
that is in play. Literally right now, it is an exciting time to
be in the Senate, and I am encouraged by that.
The other thing I would say, in the Navy, I was a naval
flight officer (NFO), P-3 aircraft, mission commander for a
long time, active and reserve. In naval aviation, especially in
the P-3 community, you have a job in the airplane, and the
crew, and you have a job on the ground. For a while, my job
was--I was described as an air intelligence officer when we
were in Southeast Asia. I had huge respect for intelligence
agents, and we got a bunch of them, really good ones. One of
our friends, one of our former colleagues, was the former
Senator from Indiana, and he ended up as Director of National
Intelligence (DNI), and a good friend of, I think, all of us.
Dan, I talked to him when he stepped down as head of DNI, and I
asked him, I said, ``Just talk to me as a friend and off the
record.'' I guess I am going on the record. But I said, ``Are
you convinced that the Russians were involved in trying to put
their fingers on the scales of the Presidential elections in
2016?'' He said, ``Without a doubt. Without a doubt they
were.'' I said, ``Well, there are like 17 or so intelligence
agencies. Do some of them feel that way?'' He said, ``All of us
do. It is unanimous. Everybody feels that the Russians were
interfering in our election in 2016, and they wanted to change
the outcome.'' And he said, ``They were not trying to help
Hillary Clinton. They were trying to help Donald Trump.''
I am not asserting that they were doing that at his request
or--but, wait a minute, maybe they were, come to think of it.
But there is no question they were involved, and with a
purpose, a single purpose, the Russians, and we caught them
red-handed. We have been dwelling on that for 4 years now. We
need to get over it. I respect enormously the work of our
intelligence agencies. I think we all do. But we need to put
that in our rearview mirror. If we are ever going to put this
pandemic in the rearview mirror, we have to figure out how to
provide vaccinations timely, promptly, correctly to about 250
million Americans. If we do not vaccinate kids under the age of
7, there are 250 million Americans we have to get vaccinated
not once but twice, in the right sequence, good recordkeeping.
We have to convince about 30 percent of the people in this
country that it is safe to do this. We have to set an example
for that. We have a lot of work to do. If we do that, we will
be on our way coming out of this recession and on our way to
better days ahead for our country and for the people who really
are counting on us. I would ask us to keep our eye on the ball.
Let me close, Mr. Chairman, if I could. We only have three
counties in Delaware. The southernmost county is called Sussex
County, and there is a town in Sussex County called Seaford,
which is famous for being the first nylon plant in the world.
It was built in Seaford, Delaware, and they had like 4,000
people working there from World War II up until about 10 years
ago. There was a church close to the plant there. It is a
Methodist church, and the minister that used to be there was an
old guy, Reverend Reynolds. His son was a Republican State
representative and a football coach and a great guy. When I got
elected Governor, he said to me--he wanted to come and sit and
talk to me and visit with me and share some thoughts, and I
said, ``Sure.'' Everybody has known in our lives--I am sure the
Chairman and Ranking Member, people we have known in our lives,
they are just wise. They just have a lot of wisdom, and every
now and then they share it with us.
He came to meet with me, and he said these words--we were
having a lovely conversation. We used to have lunch together.
And he said to me, ``Just remember this, Tom. The main thing is
to keep the main thing the main thing.'' That is what he said.
``The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.''
I sat there and I thought, ``What in the world are you
talking about?'' It took me a while to figure it out, but I
finally did. I would just say the main thing here is to keep
the main thing the main thing, and that is, we have this gift,
the Constitution, that is not perfect but it actually puts us
on a course for a more perfect union. A more perfect union.
Hopefully we are going to learn from this what we did well in
this election and what we did not. And years from now, people
will look back and say, ``Well, they kept their eye on the
ball. They kept their eye on the main thing.'' If we do that,
our history will look well on our efforts.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our Ranking Member,
Senator Peters. To our witnesses, again, thank you all.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Carper, and, again, I
appreciate your outreach this morning.
I would say the main thing of this hearing is the fact that
we need to have confidence in the integrity of our election,
and we have to recognize the reality that right now--and, quite
honestly, for the last 4 years--that has not existed. In 2016,
illegitimate result, resistant, you remember the famous Tweet
by Mark Zaid. I cannot remember it off the top of my head but
something like the coup has begun, impeachment will follow.
That is what we have been living with for 4 years. Different
election, different result, different side. The reality is
people have concerns. I am just saying these are legitimate
concerns.
You mentioned the courts. I have acknowledged the process
has worked its way to a conclusion. I have something like 59
court cases. Now, many of them, as Mr. Troupis talked about,
some were not decided on the facts. They were just decided and
dismissed based on standing, which, again, that is our process.
That is a legitimate decision by a court. But it is not very
satisfying for people who have some facts that they want to be
considered by a court, or, Mr. Binnall, the same thing in
Nevada.
So to deny the reality that we have a very serious problem,
that is not the main thing. The main thing is we have to
acknowledge that problem, and we have to work together to fix
it, to restore the confidence.
Let me just see if I can wake up Mr. Ryan and Mr. Palmer
and make sure they are there. I will ask a question of each of
you, and then I will give all of you the opportunity to kind of
make a relatively brief--this is actually a long hearing for
us. I know the Judiciary Committee sometimes goes on long, but
this is a long hearing for our Committee, and I really do
appreciate the involvement of as many members who took this
thing seriously.
But, Mr. Ryan, are you there?
Mr. Ryan. I am. Thank you, Senator.
Chairman Johnson. Sorry about that. I hope you had lunch or
something in the interim. Representative Ryan, in our
conversations, you were talking about, as Mr. Binnall talked
about, your inability to get access to certain things that I
would hope Director Krebs would agree should be transparent and
that those of you having questions about or even challenging
results should have access to in order to mount an effective
challenge. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Mr. Ryan. Actually, Senator, as a former chair of an audit
committee of publicly traded companies and currently the chair
of the audit committee of the Public School Employee Retirement
System, the control environment is a critical component of it.
Mr. Krebs is referring to, as an example, the security systems,
and I do not dispute his comments on that at all. I applaud the
great work that has been done at CISA. But until the entire
control environment--that is, the tone at the top--has been
properly evaluated and documented to where you can have a Six
Sigma LEAN systems approach that allows you to be able to have
this transparent, auditable result, it violates one of the
basic principles of any systems of internal controls.
One of the things that we tried to deal with with the
Sarbanes-Oxley bill that I think was done effectively was this
concept of control deficiencies, significant deficiencies, and
material weaknesses. The absence of the ability to provide a
timely audit of that information is problematic.
I would like to just make this comment. I spent a lifetime
as a reserve officer, and I was also on active duty, either in
Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, Operation Iraqi Freedom. I
helped supervise some of the election results in Iraq in 2005
after I was called out of retirement. I would pray that all
those sacrifices made by the millions upon millions of people
who served in our military to support and defend the
Constitution of the United States against enemies foreign and
domestic would be upheld as well on our shores so that we can
ensure the same type of election integrity that we are asking
for with transparent, fair, and accurate results to be assured
within the United States.
We know 44 of the States apparently went off without a
hitch, so we have six States that we are dealing with. That is
a pretty good track record, but, unfortunately, when you
consider the fact that four of the States were razor-thin
margin close, the results of the election could have been in
question. I concur, Senator, that most of the results have
already been looked at from a challenge from a legal
perspective, so it is probably a moot point for the current
election, but I pray that the Senate will take up this battle
standard and say we need to really reaffirm to make sure that
the people have the faith and confidence in our election
systems.
I try to live by a triangle of faith, that faith is to
believe, to believe is to have faith, and to have faith is to
have trust. Whenever that trust triangle is broken, we will
have difficulties and discord will follow. I pray to God that
every person listening to this testimony hears your words and
says let us have a peaceful resolution of all of these concerns
that we have so we can get on with business as usual.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Representative Ryan, and thank
you for your service. We will come back to you for your closing
comment.
Mr. Palmer, in our discussion prior to this hearing--and,
again, I appreciate your service and your membership in the
Commission--you talked about some things that troubled you with
this election. Can you just kind of review those with the
Committee?
Mr. Palmer. A few of the things that I was concerned about,
I think that raise the emotions from the political campaigns,
some of it was the treatment of poll watchers. I believe
transparency is a very important thing, and one of the concerns
I had was that people need to be treated with respect. I
understand as an election administrator that often we are doing
our job, and we do not believe anybody needs to be watching the
process. But some of the reports, it gets back to sort of this
the way we treat each other in this country, and if a poll
watcher is observing the process, they have a right to be there
to observe the process; they need to be respectful of the
election official. There were some significant reports that
that process was, interfered with, and people were treated very
poorly. It is not the first time. I worked at the Department of
Justice in the Civil Rights Division, and one of the things
that I saw often was based on party or race, citizens treat
each other poorly, and even in the context of elections.
I think that we need to make a commitment of respect toward
each other and to each political campaign. I think that that
was the major issue. I think that hearing a lot of the reports
about the inaccuracy of the voter rolls, I have been talking
about this for a long time. It is because there is just not the
focus or the resources provided at the State or local level, in
my opinion, to maintain the accuracy of the voter rolls. I
think that a lot can be done in a nonpartisan way, in a very
smart way, with technology. Election officials do not often
have the latest technology, and so upgrades to voter
registration systems and to resources of data can help them
clean and make sure their rolls are as accurate as could be.
Frankly, I just think that this becomes somewhat of a partisan
issue and, therefore, any attempt to maintain the accuracy of
the rolls can be seen as a negative. This is what happens, that
if you have highly inaccurate rolls, then there is a perception
of fraud. Sometimes there is actual fraud. We actually see
that. It may not change an election except in a close race. But
our job as administrators is to make sure that there is no
fraud and mitigate and minimize any irregularities. That is the
goal. Only with technology and resources and a commitment to
doing it will we see those instances decrease. I believe
technology and resources are some bipartisan ways to decrease
that, sir.
Chairman Johnson. If you could also, because your
Commission does act to certify some of these voting machines--
not all of them, but in some States you do. Can you just
quickly go through kind of what that certification process is?
I think that was one of the issues you did see, somebody trying
to get back into those machines inside that certification
process.
Mr. Palmer. We have a certification process for voting
systems. One of the vulnerabilities that we have--and I believe
CISA would agree--is that the nonvoting systems that are tied
to the Internet, they perform important functions like voter
registration, electronic poll books. There are no standards or
testing, and that is one of the things that we are trying to do
at the EAC with adequate funding we could do. But it is a big
gap in our defenses, and it is one that we may not have been
burned this time, but it is a vulnerability, and we need to
take care of it.
Chairman Johnson. OK. Thank you.
Now we will move to closing statements here, and we will go
in reverse order. Again, former Director Krebs, I appreciate
your service to the country. I appreciate what you
accomplished. As you know, I have acknowledged that repeatedly.
I think the fact that we have gone from 82 to 95 percent paper
backup, that is all great stuff. I certainly appreciate you
coming here and testifying today. I will let you make any
closing comments. Go ahead.
Mr. Krebs. Thank you, Chairman Johnson. I am going to keep
this short because I think this is a historic hearing for me.
This may be the longest hearing that I have had in this
chamber, so I will try to wrap this one up quickly.
First is thank you to you for your ongoing and constant
support of CISA. You were key in getting us across the finish
line in the Senate and ultimately in November 2018. So thank
you for your leadership there, supporting other key initiatives
for the agency, including the administrative subpoena bill. So
thank you for that.
Just a quick comment to the team at CISA, if they are
watching. It was honor to lead. Thank you for that opportunity
to lead you. You have a great future ahead of you, keep at it.
And then, last, thank you to the other witnesses for
showing up today and thank you for what they do. But, again,
thank you for your leadership here and good luck.
Chairman Johnson. Although maybe based on their attention,
you might encourage them to stay a little bit longer, but I
will do that. Mr. Binnall.
Mr. Binnall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We cannot ignore
voter fraud away. We cannot just wish it away. Unfortunately,
that is what the media these past weeks has been trying to do
in the most biased reporting I think I have ever seen, where
even in headlines they try to claim that the evidence I have
seen with my own eyes is somehow not there. We cannot wish it
away. It is just simply right now a gaslighting attempt on
America. This is real. This happened. We have to address it.
We cannot intimidate the problem away. Rightfully, much
testimony today has talked about why it is so important that
government officials, election officials, not be intimidated.
But myself, the lawyers on my team, volunteers, whistleblowers,
there are a number of people who have stood up for this fraud
that have faced similar death threats, similar intimidation,
similar harassment. I do not pay it a lot of attention because
no one is ever going to intimidate me away from pursuing the
truth, pursuing the law, representing my client. But we need to
make sure that other groups that are out there that are
encouraging the intimidation of lawyers, even, from threatening
to go after their bar cards on one side, going after their
clients or going after their safety or their lives, that cannot
stand either.
We cannot stonewall it away. I talked briefly about some
stonewalling attempts. One other that we ran across in Nevada
is that we had Postal Service employees that we knew of that
were directly told to deliver ballots to undeliverable
addresses. That is what resulted in ballots being littered all
across apartment mail rooms and trash cans everywhere, and they
were told in many instances to deliver ballots to undeliverable
addresses. The United States Postal Service, they obstructed
our ability to get that evidence in our case. We lost one of
our 15 depositions because the United States Postal Service
actually obstructed that.
It raises the question with all this stonewalling that we
encountered: What do you have to hide? I think we know in this
case what there is to hide.
I said in my opening statement that government by consent
of the governed is hard to win and easy to lose. That is why it
is so important that we take this so incredibly seriously.
Senator Hawley told a very important story about his
constituents, and I ask all Senators to think about their
constituents, to think about how you are supposed to tell your
constituents to turn out to vote if they do not know that it is
their vote that is going to matter, that they do not know if
their vote is going to be canceled out by the fraud of somebody
else, their vote is going to be diluted by these
irregularities.
We cannot pretend that this problem did not happen. It did.
This is the United States of America. We do not run from that.
We fix it. We have to use every arrow in our quiver to fix it
because it did happen, and it is now on all of us to make sure
that we fix it.
I really appreciate the Committee's time and the Chairman's
time. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Binnall. Representative
Ryan.
Mr. Ryan. Senator, thank you very much for your courage in
having this hearing.
If I could just conclude with these comments, our Nation is
at a crossroads. No matter what happens with any of the work
that is being done relative to looking at this, since probably
about the year 2000 and apparently even going back as far as
1787, although I was not there for that particular meeting,
shortly thereafter but not that one, the consent of the
governed will determine whether or not they believe in the
results of any election. It has gotten significantly worse. It
is one of the reasons I ran for office. I was elected in 2016,
obviously later in my life.
We have to examine the processes from start to finish. CISA
has done a phenomenal job in so many different respects, and
under the concerns relative to COVID-19, I actually recommend
using the CISA standards. For all the poll watchers, all the
poll workers, the directors of election, God bless them for the
great work they have done.
By the same token, there is a point in time now where we as
a Nation have to sit back and say we have to solve these
problems. We have to take a look at the entire process from
start to finish and the ability of people to interfere with
those election results, the ability of the person to be able to
change the system of controls that we can no longer rely on.
I have heard so many comments today, and I go back to what
I heard in 2007 and 2008 when I was a practicing CPA keeping
companies out of bankruptcy, and Meredith Whitney was bringing
up the concerns she had about the strength and stability of the
banking industry, and she was vilified. Michael Lewis, when he
wrote ``The Big Short,'' was vilified. The assumption was that
no-documentation loans were not dangerous, ignore that concern
that both of them had, nothing to be concerned about.
Shortly thereafter, there was as triggering event, and the
housing bubble burst, and the United States was thrust into one
of the worst issues that we have had to deal with financially
in a long time. Many States are still recovering.
I would tell you we are at that seminal moment today
relative to the sanctity of our elections that have probably
been building since 1787, but now is the time for all of us to
sit back and say we need to not vilify one another--and,
Senator, I applaud you for your willingness to get to an open,
transparent process here. But we need to sit down and do these
types of hearings. As much as the Band-aid being pulled off may
be painful, we need to expose these concerns so that the 150
million people who voted can once again feel with confidence
that the election process works and their vote mattered.
Senator, thank you for your time and for the great work of
your entire staff.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Representative Ryan, for your
testimony and your service to this country. Mr. Troupis.
Mr. Troupis. Senator, thank you very much. I want to say
right off the bat that I am honored to represent the President.
I was honored to get the call. But I am not naive. One of the
reasons I was called is because virtually every major law firm
in this country and in this city refused to represent the
President, not because of the lack of merit of his claims--we
have certainly demonstrated there is merit--but because of the
cancel culture, because of the environment that has been
created by the left that has intimidated lawyers so they cannot
be here. They are not here from the giant law firms precisely
because they were ordered by their management committees and
others that you cannot take those cases. The reason you cannot
take those cases is because our clients or the Democrat Party
or the incoming administration will remember that, and they
will hold it against you. That is a sad state of affairs.
As a former judge, I was so incensed by that that I took
the representation. That was the ultimate reason I took that
representation. I have heard a lot today about what went on
afterwards as if these latest threats are coming from the
right. Remember why and how this started after the election. We
need to have faith in our court system. We have to acknowledge
that the court system has been deeply intimidated by the left,
just as the lawyers have been intimidated, and that is a sad,
sad state of affairs. I so much appreciate, Senator, that you
are holding these hearings because, otherwise, as we are
finding out all over the country, these items just disappear.
No. 2, I wanted to say, as I have said throughout my
testimony, that one of the reasons people are doubting the
election is because the other side here, the Biden campaign's
primary defense is do not hear the evidence, do not let them
litigate, do not have a court rule on the substance.
Let us be honest. That is what is going on. That is why the
public does not trust this outcome. It is not about the
President. It is about what the other side is doing to
intimidate and force people not to listen, not to take the
evidence.
I have heard lots of fancy words here today, but if you
give transparency, if you let the issues come out--and I have
represented Republicans, and I have represented Democrats, and
at the end of the day, lawyers do their job when it is open and
we are able to present the evidence. I so appreciate the fact
that you, a nonlawyer, is taking on this task here.
But, finally--and I have to say this--we had 4,000 people
volunteer from everywhere in the country to come to Wisconsin
to participate in the process. We had over 2,500 volunteers
over a 10-day period take their own time, their own money, come
from all over the country, and they came and they attended the
recount and they participated. I said to the recount on the
floor, the Democrats and the Republicans, I said, ``If you are
losing your faith in the greatness of this republic, look at
this recount. Look at the number of people from the Trump
campaign and from the Biden campaign that would give of their
time and effort to be here,'' in that case in Madison,
Wisconsin. It was humbling, truly humbling, for me and everyone
on our legal team and everyone who was there.
We have a great system, and people want to participate. Let
us make it transparent. Again, I cannot thank those volunteers
enough. They are the ones who make this democracy work.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Troupis. I noticed Mr.
Binnall shaking his head when you were talking about the fact
that lawyers from large law firms were more than discouraged,
they were actually prevented from representing the President,
which is kind of a sad state of affairs.
I will also say storefronts in big cities did not board up
their windows in anticipation of a Vice President Biden
victory. Commissioner Palmer.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
I will make a few comments.
The EAC is looking at holding a series of hearing and issue
a report on some nonpartisan recommendations. There are going
to be a lot of policy disputes around the country in State
legislatures, and, that could be debated back and forth about
what the best policies in certain areas. But we as the election
administration community want to do better. We understand that
oftentimes there are flaws in the way we administer elections.
It happens in every election. We could always do better.
The way we respond in the election administration
community, just like the military, is more education and more
training and more resources when available, and that is really
the recipe, I believe, moving forward, if you want to improve
the performance of election officials and their election
workers within an office and our poll workers, it will take a
commitment of time, resources, and training to do so. The EAC
is prepared to do that free to localities with appropriate
funding.
I think that is really my solution, thinking back to my
military days, whenever there was an issue, more education and
more funding, more training.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Commissioner Palmer.
Judge Starr, you were our lead-off hitter. Now you are
batting cleanup here, so thank you for hanging in there. Do you
have some closing comments?
Mr. Starr. I think the bottom of the order, Mr. Chairman,
but thank you. Thank you for your leadership and a real sense
today's hearing has been a tribute to the Constitution. I loved
Senator Carper's comments about December 7, 1787, and the idea
to form a more perfect union, and this hearing has been in that
spirit.
I am also reminded of one of President Lyndon Johnson's
favorite quotes from the Prophet Isaiah: ``Come let us reason
together.'' I think this has been a time of reasoning together
and listening in the great traditions of the U.S. Senate.
Let me close with words that I heard with my own ears from
United States Senator Alan Simpson, now the tender age of 89 in
retirement, when he was addressing in his valedictory at the
Kennedy Institute of Politics which he headed for 2 years. He
told the audience--and it was in very hushed tones. Whatever
your politics were, Alan Simpson was a great man and recognized
to be that. He closed with these words: ``In politics, if you
do not have integrity, you do not have anything.'' What this
hearing has tried to do is how can we, in fact, promote not
just confidence in government, but how can we, in fact, promote
the integrity and honesty which is at the bedrock of the kind
of government in whom we can trust.
So thank you for the honor of appearing before the
Committee.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Judge Starr, for your
participation and for your service to this country.
I do want to make a comment. We spoke to--and we
appreciated the fact--Dominion Systems, Edison Research, AP, a
number of people we spoke to prior to this hearing. Now, they
did not all participate, but we will leave the record open, and
I encourage everybody who spoke, and people that we did not, if
you want to input information into this record, you have a
couple weeks to do it, and I encourage it. Our staff will look
at that, and we will vet it. We will call you; we will ask
questions. This hearing is not dangerous. What would be
dangerous is not discussing this openly and frankly, with
transparency.
This is a problem that we have to acknowledge and recognize
and solve together. We are only going to do that with
information. I am soliciting information. This is only part of
the process. There was oversight before this hearing. There
needs to be oversight after this in the next Congress, and
hopefully I can work with Senator Carper, who I think we all
recognize has done a pretty good job of outreach here and some
pretty bipartisan words here. I am hoping that is how we can
move forward, because I truly think as Americans we share the
same goal. We all want a safe, prosperous, secure country,
State, community. That is what we want. We want to be able to
raise our children in safety and freedom. The way it works in
this country is through participation in the democratic
process.
I think everybody in this panel wants to make sure that we
have good participation. We encourage citizens to participate.
We also want every legitimate vote to count. But what we should
be every bit in favor of making sure that every vote is
legitimate. That is what this is all about. If we can put the
controls in place and actually act on them--it is great having
paper ballots, but you have to have access to look at it to
give yourself confidence in the current election and moving
forward that, OK, this all worked out.
Wisconsin's recount, totally honest. Our count was almost
100 percent accurate. Other issues, but, again, I think in
Wisconsin we got a pretty good level of confidence that we run
our elections right. I will just give another shout-out to
Jeanette Merten, the county clerk in the town of Oshkosh. I am
sure the vast majority are just like Jeanette. We are in really
good hands.
To conclude, this is my last hearing. It has been an honor
and privilege to chair this Committee.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:39 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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