U.S. Department of Justice Office of Information Policy Suite 11050 1425 New York Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001 Telephone: (202) 514-3642 January 31, 2018 Re: Ms. Wendy Weiser Brennan Center for Justice 120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271 lopezt@brennan.law.nyu.edu DOJ-2017-004083 (OLP) DOJ-2017-004291 (AG) DOJ-2017-004292 (DAG) DOJ-2017-004293 (ASG) DOJ-2017-005582 (AG) DOJ-2017-005734 (DAG) DOJ-2017-005735 (ASG) DOJ-2017-005736 (OLP) DOJ-2017-005737 (OIP) 17-cv-06335 (S.D.N.Y.) VRB:CJOK:BPF Dear Ms. Weiser: This is an interim response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests dated and received in this Office on May 15, 2017 and July 25, 2017, in which you requested records pertaining to (1) the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (the Commission), and (2) communications and documents involving the use of specific databases and activities of the Commission. This response is made on behalf of the Offices of the Attorney General (OAG), Deputy Attorney General (ODAG), Associate Attorney General (OASG), Legal Policy (OLP), and Information Policy (OIP). Please be advised that our records searches on behalf of OAG, ODAG, OASG, OLP, and OIP, as well as of the Departmental Executive Secretariat, the official records repository for OAG, ODAG, and OASG, are now complete. At this time, I have determined that ninetyeight pages containing records responsive to your requests are appropriate for release without excision, and copies are enclosed. Please note that the enclosed pages also contain records that are not responsive to your requests. Those records have not been processed and are marked accordingly. We are continuing to process remaining records that are potentially responsive to your requests, and will respond to you again by March 31, 2018 pursuant to your letter filed with the court on January 10, 2018. (See ECF, No. 40). For your information, Congress excluded three discrete categories of law enforcement and national security records from the requirements of the FOIA. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(c) (2015) (amended 2016). This response is limited to those records that are subject to the requirements of the FOIA. This is a standard notification that is given to all our requesters and should not be taken as an indication that excluded records do, or do not, exist. -2If you have any questions regarding this response, please contact Casey Kyung-Se Lee, Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York at 212-637-2714. Sincerely, Vanessa R. Brinkmann Senior Counsel Enclosures NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.16479-000002 20180129-0000033 Non-Responsive Record Non-Responsive Record Kobach Confirms Payment For Breitbart Columns. The Hill (9/1 , Manchester, 1.68M) reports Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the head of President Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity, has confirmed that 24 Document ID: 0.7.14363.16479-000002 20180129-0000056 on?Responsive Record he is paid for the columns published on Breitbart News. Kobach has written columns advocating for the end of DACA, as well as other pieces on immigration and on ?his own Commission on Election Integrity." In an inten/iew, Kobach said, get paid for my like you?re paid." Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.16479-000002 20180129-0000057 NEWS CLIPS DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.16479-000004 20180129-0000232 Non-Responsive Record Trump Voter Fraud Panel Head Confirms He’s A Paid Breitbart Columnist By Julia Manchester The Hill, September 1, 2017 Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the head of President Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity, is a paid columnist at the conservative Breitbart News website. “I get paid for my columns … just like you’re paid,” Kobach told The Kansas City Star. Kobach has published seven columns on Breitbart, most recently on why the program known as Deferred Action for Ch ldhood Arrivals (DACA) should be ended. “DACA is inconsistent with the rule of law, inconsistent with the president’s own promises, and inconsistent with the president’s principled stand against illegal immigration. It must end,” Kobach, who is running for governor of Kansas on a strict immigration platform, wrote on the website. His four most recent pieces are labeled as exclusives. Kobach’s other pieces highlight immigration, as well as his own Commission on Election Integrity. The Star reports that Kobach, who has defended Breitbart, has other columns for the conservative publication lined up. “I think Breitbart.com appeals to anyone who is Republican or conservative in any way,” Kobach said, according to the Star, adding “it appeals to a broad spectrum of conservative readers.” While Kobach is currently running for governor of Kansas, there was also some talk that he could be a candidate for secretary of Homeland Security. Kobach is not the only Trump administration official to have ties to Breitbart. The president’s former chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, left the site to chair Trump’s campaign and later work in the White House. He returned to Breitbart last month after he left the White House, along with former White House aide Sebastian Gorka, who worked as a national security editor at the site. Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.16479-000004 20180129-0000376 NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.37674-000002 20180129-0001244 Non-Responsive Record Voter Fraud Panel Head Calls For Transparency. CNN (8/31, Jarrett, 33.59M) reports that “the head of President Donald Trump’s voter integrity commission is reaching out to fellow panel members to ensure the group’s meeting next month operates with ‘the highest levels of transparency,’ after the Justice Department fell on its sword about prior document disclosure failures to a federal judge in DC Wednesday. ‘I wanted to contact you with a request regarding any written materials for the September 12 meeting,’ said Kris Kobach, vice chair of the commission in a letter to the other commissioners. ‘We want to ensure we operate with the highest level of transparency and in a way that allows the public to be fully informed of our commission’s work.’” CNN notes that Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Shapiro “apologized to US District Judge Colleen KollarKotelly in court for what she called a ‘misunderstanding’ over what documents the commission was required to produce in advance of its first meeting on July 19 under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.” Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.37674-000002 20180129-0001266 NEWS CLIPS DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.37674-000004 20180129-0001541 Non-Responsive Record DOJ Admits ‘Chaotic’ Start To Voter Fraud Panel As Kobach Calls For Transparency By Laura Jarrett CNN, August 31, 2017 The head of President Donald Trump’s voter integrity commission is reaching out to fellow panel members to ensure the group’s meeting next month operates with “the highest levels of transparency,” after the Justice Department fell on its sword about prior document disclosure failures to a federal judge in DC Wednesday. “I wanted to contact you with a request regarding any written materials for the September 12 meeting,” said Kris Kobach, vice chair of the commission in a letter to the other commissioners. “We want to ensure we operate with the highest level of transparency and in a way that allows the public to be fully informed of our commission’s work.” Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Shapiro apologized to US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in court for what she called a “misunderstanding” over what documents the commission was required to produce in advance of its first meeting on July 19 under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. “It was a chaotic start to the commission,” Shapiro said. “There was a little bit of unknown and a little bit of disorganization in terms of how the meeting would happen.” Kobach sent a letter to all 50 states requesting a slew of voter-roll data in late June and states began sending their records earlier this month. 114 Document ID: 0.7.14363.37674-000004 20180129-0001654 The current lawsuit – one of at least seven pending against the commission – was brought by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in early July. While the judge denied the group’s initial request to block the commission from holding its meeting in July, she allowed the suit to move forward with the understanding that it would turn over materials prepared for or by the panel. Kollar-Kotelly agreed Wednesday with the Lawyers’ Committee that the commission failed to “live up to the representations” made to the court before the first meeting. In a written order later Wednesday, the judge ordered that the commission to submit a detailed declaration to court now explaining its process for identifying documents to be disclosed going forward, as well as an index listing “what specific documents have been collected with respect to the Commission to date, which of those have been disclosed, and if they have not been disclosed, on what basis.” The judge denied the request to depose Kobach for now. The Justice Department declined to comment. Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.37674-000004 20180129-0001655 NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.35028 20180129-0002983 Non-Responsive Record many as one million voters to the state’s rolls, was signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican who had vetoed similar legislation last year.” Non-Responsive Record DOJ Attorney Apologizes After Judge Blasts Voting Panel’s Failure To Disclose Information. The Washington Post (8/30, Hsu, 10.38M) reports that US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, DC on Wednesday “tore into President Trump’s voter commission for reneging on a promise to fully disclose public documents before a July 19 meeting, ordering the government to meet new transparency requirements and eliciting an apology from administration lawyers.” Judge Kollar-Kotelly said the Election Integrity Commission “released only an agenda and proposed bylaws before its first meeting at the White House complex last month,” but “once gathered, commissioners sat with thick binders that included documents the public had not seen, including a specially prepared report and a 381 -page ‘database’ purporting to show 1,100 cases of voter fraud, both from the Heritage Foundation, and also received a typed list of possible topics to address from the panel vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach.” Politico (8/30, Gerstein, 3.6M) reports that Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Shapiro, representing the commission, “apologized” to Judge Kollar-Kotelly “over the panel’s failure to abide by a promise to disclose all relevant records ahead of the group’s first meeting last month.” Shapiro “said the highly scrutinized panel and its staff did not realize that the pledge to make materials public could be interpreted to include the presentations and reports that individual panel members brought to the inaugural July 19 session. ‘I want to apologize first and foremost for the misunderstanding,’” Shapiro told the judge, who said “she appreciated the government’s apology,” but also said “you didn’t live up to the representations” made before the meeting. NYTimes Praises Illinois Action On Voter Registration. The New York Times (8/31, Subscription Publication, 13.56M) editorializes, “In the face of America’s abysmal voter participation rates, lawmakers have two choices: They can make voting easier, or they can make it harder. Illinois made the right choice this week” by enacting automatic voter registration. The bill, “which could add as Document ID: 0.7.14363.35028 20180129-0003002 NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: MONDAY, JULY 31, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.20521-000002 20180129-0009567 Non-Responsive Record Non-Responsive Record WPost: Trump Election Commission Could Disenfranchise Millions. In an editorial, the Washington Post (7/30, 12.92M) says that in an email to a Trump transition official, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who now chairs President Trump’s election integrity commission, “said he was preparing an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act to allow states to demand documentary proof of citizenship for new registrants.” The Post says the commission is “stacked with Kobach clones who have made voter suppression into a political cottage industry,” and if it “endorses the Kansas model, or even recommends requiring documentary proof of citizenship as a condition of voter registration, millions of Americans will face disenfranchisement, and democracy itself will be at risk.” Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.20521-000002 20180129-0009580 NEWS CLIPS DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10801-000003 20180129-0010001 Non-Responsive Record Partners In Voter Suppression New York Times, August 11, 2017 16 Document ID: 0.7.14363.10801-000003 20180129-0010016 The Trump administration moved deeper into the politics of voter suppression this week by reversing the federal government’s opposition to Ohio’s effort to purge tens of thousands of voters from the rolls simply because they vote infrequently. A federal appeals court blocked Ohio’s move last year as a violation of voting laws, in a case brought by civil rights advocates and backed by the Obama administration’s Department of Justice. Now that an appeal has been accepted for this term by the Supreme Court, Trump appointees at Justice — not career professionals — have changed the government’s position to side with Ohio, in effect endorsing the purge and asking that it be allowed to go forward. The case is a major challenge to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which require states to update rolls by deleting voters who move away, but bar the states from deregistering people simply because of voting inactivity. Viewed in a wider lens, the Justice Department reversal is a transparent part of the Trump administration’s embrace of voter suppression tactics engineered by red-state Republicans in the name of preventing “voter fraud” — a nonexistent problem, according to repeated nonpartisan research. The real goal is to block minority and poor citizens who tend to vote for Democrats. In February, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions was sworn in, the government dropped Obama-era opposition to Texas’ oppressive voter ID law, which a federal court ruled in April intentionally discriminated against black and Latino voters. President Trump further elevated this phony issue by alleging without proof that voter fraud cost him the popular presidential vote. He imperiously created a commission dominated by partisan lackeys to drum up evidence of supposed fraud. The commission has become a bipartisan political joke, scorned by state election officials for its zealotry. The Ohio law removed voters from eligibility for sitting out three election cycles and failing to respond to a state warning that their eligibility was at risk; this was proof enough, the state said, that the voters had moved elsewhere. Ohio says the law is no more than housekeeping, an effort to tidy up the rolls, not voter suppression. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled last September that it violated federal law protecting registrants who choose not to vote. Opponents said the law was designed to target poor and minority voters, who were less likely than more affluent voters to respond to a mailed warning that their eligib lity was at risk. After the law was blocked, 7,500 people who would have been ineligible managed to vote in November, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. The Trump administration claims Ohio acted responsibly. Opponents see it as a subversion of democracy. The case could be a template for further electoral mischief, boosted now by a shamelessly politicized Justice Department. Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10801-000003 20180129-0010017 Non-Responsive Record 5 Big Unanswered Questions About The Russia Investigations : NPR By Philip Ewing NPR, August 10, 2017 The Senate is long gone. The House? Splitsville. The president is at his golf club in New Jersey. Only the hardiest swamp creatures continue to scuttle in and out of the half-empty offices of late-August Washington, D.C. Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller and his team, however, haven’t gone anywhere. His attorneys and investigators are using a federal grand jury to interview witnesses and issue subpoenas as they look into potential connections between President Trump’s campaign and Russia’s attack on the 2016 election. News also emerged this week that FBI agents searched a home owned by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and that Manafort and other people in Trump world, including Donald Trump Jr., had submitted hundreds of documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee. If all that has been established, many other questions remain about Mueller’s investigation — just who else is he interviewing? What specific materials does he want? — as well as the rest of the sprawling Russia imbroglio. 1. What inning is this? Does Mueller’s use of the grand jury mean this game is almost over — or has everyone on the starting lineup even had a chance at bat? Does the FBI search warrant mean the tempo is increasing? Mueller hasn’t uttered more than a peep on the record since he’s been in his job. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has talked about the probe in general terms, but no one seems to have a sense about how far along this story might be — only that it’s focused appropriately. “It’s not a fishing expedition,” Rosenstein recently told Fox News Sunday. The more time Mueller takes, the greater the political pressure in Washington. The leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees said at one time they hoped to complete their investigations about Russia’s election interference by the fall. That may prove optimistic, but if they do wrap up their work and Mueller’s investigation continues into the new year and beyond, it could turn into a big factor in the 2018 congressional midterm elections. 2. How much classified, or otherwise confidential, evidence will become public? The Russia soap opera is frustrating to try to understand because it’s an iceberg, only partly visible above the water. Much more of the evidence remains hidden — teased by current or former intelligence officials but never deta led. One big example: electronic intercepts of communications between Americans and Russians allegedly involved in the interference. “I was worried by a number of the contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons,” as former CIA Director John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee this spring. “By the time I left office ... I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons involved in the campaign or not work on their behalf.” Mueller and the congressional intelligence committees have access to this evidence — believed to be intercepted emails or other messages from key Americans to key Russians. There’s also classified material from allied intelligence services. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that European spy agencies had sent material to Washington in 2016 — but said nothing more. “It’s quite sensitive,” he warned in May. 101 Document ID: 0.7.14363.10801-000003 20180129-0010101 It also hasn’t been described in anything like helpful detail. U.S. government officials have spoken about it anonymously to reporters — for example, CNN reported that Russians discussed conversations with then-Trump campaign chairman Manafort — but very little is solidly on the record. Until it is, the widespread skepticism among many Americans about the theory of the case — that Donald Trump or some of his top campaign aides might have colluded with Russians who targeted the election — will likely endure. 3. What if Trump or associates did something other than “collude?” So far, prosecutors haven’t accused the president or anyone in his camp of doing anything wrong. But allegations about Trump’s business practices, and those of his associates, swirled for years before his run for office. Separately, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and others have said they want to know whether Trump might have obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey and taking other actions to try to protect himself or his aides — whatever the merits of the underlying DOJ investigation into possible collusion with Russia. These issues aren’t trivial, and they’re all tied together with the original mandate for Mueller’s investigation: Did, per press reports, Russian underworld figures have a relationship with Trump? If so, did Russian political leaders’ awareness of these ties put the president in a position in which he might be subject to coercion? Trump alluded obliquely to this thread of the story in his interview with The New York Times. He told the newspaper that he’d consider it a “breach” of Mueller’s mandate for the special counsel to look into his or his family’s business practices. “I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows?” Trump said. “I don’t make money from Russia.” That’s not the account The New Republic, for example, gave in its story “Trump’s Russian Laundromat,” which described decades’ worth of business relationships between the Trumps and Russian underworld figures who allegedly used the president’s properties to launder illicit money. The magazine reported, among other things, that at least 13 people connected to Russian organized crime have “owned, lived in and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.” If Mueller’s investigators substantiate organized crime connections to Trump himself, but no “collusion” with Russia’s election mischief, would they reveal it? And, if so, what happens next? 4. Will the U.S. ever deploy any safeguards or countermeasures? Although some Americans — particularly Trump supporters — don’t believe the Russians attacked the election, Washington has officially rebuked Moscow over it. Members of Congress passed and Trump himself signed legislation imposing new sanctions and constraining the president’s ability to lift them on his own. Before he told supporters at a political rally in West Virginia that the story was a “hoax,” Trump said in signing the sanctions bill that he supported “making clear that America will not tolerate interference in our democratic process, and that we w ll side with our allies and friends against Russian subversion and destabilization.” (The question of whether U.S. sanctions actually change Russia’s policies is a different matter.) But many members of Congress and outside advocates say Washington must do much more to deter future Russian interference in elections and respond in kind to Russia’s war of information against the U.S. State governments are bitterly frustrated with the federal government’s follow-up to the election interference, from the awkwardness of the outreach by the Department of Homeland Security to a White House “voter fraud” commission widely viewed as partisan. At the same time, former diplomats and intelligence officers complain that Washington has all but surrendered the battlefield of public opinion to Moscow. The Russian government is spending millions of rubles on both open and covert influence operations against the West, from cable TV networks to Twitter bots, but commentators argue the U.S. isn’t even trying to level the playing field. Two members of Congress asked why the State Department reportedly isn’t using funds that have been set aside exactly for that purpose. “Countering foreign propaganda should be a top priority, and it is very concerning that progress on combating this problem is being delayed because the State Department isn’t tapping into these resources,” complained Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. “This is indefensible,” said Sen. Chris Murphy D-Conn. A State Department spokeswoman told reporters that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to review global “engagement” following Trump’s approval of the sanctions bill, but she acknowledged that much of the work now is focused on the Islamic State. Clapper told lawmakers earlier this year he thought they should bring back a “U.S. Information Agency on steroids,” targeting Russians and “giving them some of their own medicine much more aggressively than we’ve done now.” 102 Document ID: 0.7.14363.10801-000003 20180129-0010102 Will Congress heed his advice? Will it increase federal scrutiny of the security of state election systems and their vendors — or will the politics, along with all the other priorities that await lawmakers when they return in September, make it all too fraught? 5. What threats will face American elections by 2018 or 2020? “Generals are always fighting the last war,” or so goes the military bromide. One potential danger facing policymakers in Washington, however, is that whatever precautions and preparations they take ahead of big upcoming American elections, the threats from foreign powers may be different. New technology might enable a whole new strain of “fake news” — real-looking videos, for example, in which public figures are made to appear to be saying things they never actually did. Or a cyberattack might look completely different on Election Day 2020, for example, than the ones the Russians launched during the 2016 cycle: Instead of snooping in state records but permitting operations to go smoothly, attackers might try to erase millions of names from voting records, or register the same people in multiple places or otherwise sabotage the day itself to cause maximum disruption. The news environment could be completely different, too. Facebook and Google might get control of the online bots that promote or suppress stories seen by specific groups of users. But what if Russia gradually turns up the volume on its overt messaging? Online amplifiers and trolls already sometimes make common cause with some factions in the U.S., including, for example, in a recent, sustained attack against national security adviser H.R. McMaster. If the presence of such a force is no longer a surprise by 2018 or 2020, will it become so loud it changes the campaign landscape? W ll the states and the federal government be ready? Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10801-000003 20180129-0010103 Non-Responsive Record OTHER NATIONAL NEWS: Poll: Half Of Republicans Would Back Postponing 2020 Election If Trump Proposed It By Rebecca Savransky The Hill, August 10, 2017 Slightly more than half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 presidential election if President Trump proposed it to make sure only eligible American citizens can vote, according to a new survey. According to a poll conducted by two academic authors and published by The Washington Post, 52 percent of Republicans said they would back a postponement of the next election if Trump called for it. If Trump and congressional Republicans proposed postponing the election to ensure only eligible citizens could vote, support from Republicans rises to 56 percent. Pollsters found 47 percent of Republicans think Trump won the popular vote. A majority of Republicans, 68 percent, also thinks millions of illegal immigrants voted in the presidential election and 73 percent think voter fraud happens somewhat or very often. The poll was conducted from June 5-20 among 1,325 Americans. The survey focused on the 650 respondents who said they identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party. Earlier this year, Trump called for an election integrity commission to investigate his claims of voter fraud in last year’s presidential election. Dozens of state election officials from both parties have rebuked Trump’s claim that millions of illegal votes were cast during the 2016 presidential race. Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10801-000003 20180129-0010157 NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.34203-000001 20180129-0011562 “Critics” Say Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission Creates Hacking Risk. The AP (8/9, Non-Responsive Record Mulvihill) reports, “Officials from both major political parties” said in 2016 that “US elections are so decentralized that it would be impossible for hackers to manipulate ballot counts or voter rolls on a wide scale.” However, says the AP, “the voter fraud commission established by President Donald Trump could take away that one bit of security.” It “has requested information on voters from every state and recently won a federal court challenge to push ahead with the collection, keeping it in one place. By compiling a national list of registered voters, the federal government could provide one-stop shopping for hackers and hostile foreign governments seeking to wreak havoc with elections, critics say.” Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), “who has refused to send data to the commission,” told the AP, “Coordinating a national voter registration system located in the White House is akin to handing a zip drive to Russia.” Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.34203-000001 20180129-0011570 NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10560-000001 20180129-0013347 Non-Responsive Record collection, keeping it in one place,” and “by compiling a national list of registered voters, the federal government could provide one-stop shopping for hackers and hostile foreign governments seeking to wreak havoc with elections.” Non-Responsive Record Voting Fraud Panel Could Create Easy Target For Hackers. The AP (8/8, Mulvihill) reports from Cherry Hill, NJ that “officials from both parties had a consistent answer last year when asked about the security of voting systems: U.S. elections are so decentralized that it would be impossible for hackers to manipulate ballot counts or voter rolls on a wide scale,” but “the voter fraud commission established by President Donald Trump could take away that one bit of security.” According to the AP, “the commission has requested information on voters from every state and recently won a federal court challenge to push ahead with the Document ID: 0.7.14363.10560-000001 20180129-0013360 NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10161-000001 20180129-0017309 Non-Responsive Record Non-Responsive Record New York To Share Voter Data With Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission. POLITICO New York (8/2, Mahoney) reports that the state of New York will “share a database containing almost all of the” record requested by President Trump’s commission on voter fraud. This, despite Gov. Andre Cuomo’s declaration in June that “New York’s secretary of state, Rossana Rosado, would not fulfill the commission’s request for the names, party affiliation, partial Social Security Numbers, addresses and participation history of Empire State voters.” While Cuomo “stated that New York ‘refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election,’” the decision “was never his to make; the database is maintained by the Board of Elections, which is not directly under the governor’s purview.” In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (8/2, Von Spakovsky, Adams, Subscription Publication, 6.99M), two members of the President’s election integrity commission, Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, take issue with claims from the New York Times, the Washington Post and others that the commission is engaging in voter suppression. Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10161-000001 20180129-0017324 NEWS CLIPS DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10161-000003 20180129-0017399 Non-Responsive Record Critics Try To Smear Trump’s Election-Integrity Commission Calling us racists and ‘voter-suppression superstars’ is shameful and corrosive to civility. By Hans Von Spakovsky And J. Christian Adams Wall Street Journal, August 2, 2017 Full-text stories from the Wall Street Journal are available to Journal subscribers by clicking the link. Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.10161-000003 20180129-0017483 NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: MONDAY, JULY 31, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.34904-000001 20180129-0019124 Non-Responsive Record Non-Responsive Record WPost: Trump Election Commission Could Disenfranchise Millions. In an editorial, the Washington Post (7/30, 12.92M) says that in an email to a Trump transition official, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who now chairs President Trump’s election integrity commission, “said he was preparing an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act to allow states to demand documentary proof of citizenship for new registrants.” The Post says the commission is “stacked with Kobach clones who have made voter suppression into a political cottage industry,” and if it “endorses the Kansas model, or even recommends requiring documentary proof of citizenship as a condition of voter registration, millions of Americans will face disenfranchisement, and democracy itself will be at risk.” Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.34904-000001 20180129-0019137 NEWS CLIPS DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: MONDAY, JULY 31, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.34904-000003 20180129-0019182 Non-Responsive Record Hackers Break Into Voting Machines In Minutes At Hacking Competition By John Bowden The Hill, July 29, 2017 Hackers at at a competition in Las Vegas were able to successfully breach the software of U.S. voting machines in just 90 minutes on Friday, illuminating glaring security deficiencies in America’s election infrastructure. Tech minds at the annual “DEF CON” in Las Vegas were given physical voting machines and remote access, with the instructions of gaining access to the software. According to a Register report, within minutes, hackers exposed glaring physical and software vulnerabilities across multiple U.S. voting machine companies’ products. Some devices were found to have physical ports that could be used to attach devices containing malicious software. Others had insecure Wi-Fi connections, or were running outdated software with security vulnerabilities like Windows XP. The Register reported that the challenge was designed by Jake Braun, the Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge Global Advisors and Managing Director of Cambridge Global Capital. 26 Document ID: 0.7.14363.34904-000003 20180129-0019207 “Without question, our voting systems are weak and susceptible. Thanks to the contributions of the hacker community today, we’ve uncovered even more about exactly how,” Braun said. “The scary thing is we also know that our foreign adversaries – including Russia, North Korea, Iran – possess the capabilities to hack them too, in the process undermining principles of democracy and threatening our national security.” The machines were bought on Ebay, and were manufactured by major U.S. voting machine companies such as Diebold Nixorf, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Winvote. In January, President Trump signed an executive order establishing a commission to investigate possible voter fraud in the 2016 election. The commission, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, is expected to “study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections” as well as “fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting,” the order says. Trump himself has made baseless claims about millions of illegal voters during the 2016 election. “You can never really find, you know, there are going to be — no matter what numbers we come up with there are going to be lots of people that did things that we’re not going to find out about,” Trump said in January. “But we will find out because we need a better system where that can’t happen.” Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.34904-000003 20180129-0019208 NEWS BRIEFING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’ S PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.35142-000001 20180129-0021428 Non-Responsive Record Non-Responsive Record Roll Call (7/25, Garcia, 91 K) reports that Jonathan Thompson, CEO and executive director for the National Sheriffs’ Association, “praised Sessions for his support of law enforcement. ‘We have complete confidence in Attorney General Sessions,’ he said in a statement. ‘Attorney General Sessions has restored law enforcement’s trust in the federal government and we applaud his efforts to back the men and women in law enforcement.’” Kenneth Blackwell, “the former Ohio secretary of state who served on Trump’s transition team and sits on his voter fraud commission, also praised Sessions. ‘Under his leadership, the DOJ has followed the law and put in place policies to crack down on illegal immigration and sanctuary cities,’ Blackwell said in a post on his Facebook page. ‘Additionally, General Sessions and the DOJ are coming down hard on violent criminals ravaging our cities, and on gangs that are infiltrating communities across America.’” Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.35142-000001 20180129-0021433 NEWS CLIPS DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE WWW.BULLETININTELLIGENCE.COM/JUSTICE TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF DATE: WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.35142-000003 20180129-0021518 Non-Responsive Record Conservative Groups Come To Sessions’ Defense By Eric Garcia Roll Call, July 25, 2017 Conservative groups are rushing to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ defense after repeated criticism from President Donald Trump and reports that his days are numbered. Jonathan Thompson, CEO and executive director for the National Sheriffs’ Association, praised Sessions for his support of law enforcement. “We have complete confidence in Attorney General Sessions,” he said in a statement. “Attorney General Sessions has restored law enforcement’s trust in the federal government and we applaud his efforts to back the men and women in law enforcement.” The statements come as Trump criticized Sessions in interviews and on Twitter both for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and for not prosecuting Hillary Clinton. News organizations have reported that Trump is considering firing Sessions. Kenneth Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who served on Trump’s transition team and sits on his voter fraud commission, also praised Sessions. “Under his leadership, the DOJ has followed the law and put in place policies to crack down on illegal immigration and sanctuary cities,” Blackwell said in a post on his Facebook page. “Additionally, General Sessions and the DOJ are coming down hard on violent criminals ravaging our cities, and on gangs that are infiltrating communities across America.” Former Sen. Jim DeMint, who used to lead the Heritage Foundation and just started the Conservative Partnership Institute, tweeted that he agreed there was too much of a focus on Russia, but defended Sessions. Sessions also got a boost from the socially conservative Family Research Council’s president Tony Perkins. “If there’s one thing we know about the Attorney General, it’s that he understands the importance of all of our God-given rights, respects the law, and is making tremendous progress to restore our nation to greatness,” Perkins said in a statement. The support comes alongside support from numerous conservative members of Congress and senators such as Sen. Ted Cruz, who batted down speculation he was being considered as a replacement. Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.35142-000003 20180129-0021543 DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE NE WS CLIPS PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTCE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF FRIDAY, JULY 21, 2017 7:30 AM EDT on-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.35675-000003 20180129-0023721 on-Responsive Record YOU IN Trump?s Vow Proves Prophetic By Richard Wolf USA Today, July 20, 2017 WASHINGTON President Trump has yet to sign a Republican health care bill, but New York?s attorney general vowed this week to challenge it in court. The same day, a government watchdog group urged a federal judge to block Trump's voter fraud commission from gathering sensitive state data. Environmental groups were busy as well. The latest in a ?urry of lawsuits aimed at the new administration protested its extension of ?shing privileges in federal waters, which endangers red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. From the six-month-old administration?s point of view, it was just another day ?ghting what Neil Gorsuch long before he became Trump?s choice for the Supreme Court called liberals? ?oven/veening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy.? But the daily legal battles from immigration and education to religious freedom and regulatory reform are threatening to subsume Trump?s policy agenda, if not his presidency. His Feb. 9 vow to YOU IN after one in a series of legal setbacks for his immigrant and refugee travel ban, has proved prophetic in reverse. SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT Donald J. (@realDonaldTrump) Febmary 9, 2017 164 Document ID: 0.7.14363.35675-000003 20180129-0023884 The sheer number of lawsuits presents a challenge for Justice Department lawyers, who must respond to them all. On a single day in March, the government’s point man in the travel ban case, acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, was forced to defend the policy in two federal courts nearly 5,000 miles apart — in person in Maryland, by phone in Hawaii. The Natural Resources Defense Council, one of many aggressive environmental groups, is involved in 27 cases challenging Trump administration policies, from its easing of restrictions on mercury and methane pollution to the status of the rusty patched bumble bee. “That’s about one a week, and it’s going to accelerate,” says Mitch Bernard, the group’s chief counsel. On Thursday, the group sued over potential vulnerabilities at a uranium processing plant in Tennessee. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed 26 lawsuits on the travel ban alone. The group also is in court over the government’s threat to withhold federal funds from immigrant-friendly sanctuary cities, and it’s defending Iraqi nationals facing deportation in Detroit and a Somali-American family detained at the Canadian border. American Oversight, a watchdog group created in March to press for greater government transparency and accountability, has filed 11 lawsuits seeking information on topics ranging from the potential costs of Trump’s planned border wall to his claim of being wiretapped at Trump Tower in New York last year. States v. Feds Democratic attorneys general from Maine to Hawaii have taken a leading role in the legal onslaught, just as their Republican counterparts did in challenging President Barack Obama’s signature achievements on health care, immigration and environmental regulation. “I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and I go home,” Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said in describing his job as the state’s attorney general in 2013. Four years later, Democratic attorneys general have been quick to file lawsuits on the travel ban, as well as the Education Department’s delay in helping students who took out fraudulent loans and the Energy Department’s delay of energy efficiency standards. Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin led his Democratic colleagues in challenging the Trump administration’s travel ban. (Photo: Caleb Jones, AP) To succeed like other litigants, states must show they will be harmed, often economically, by the policies they’re challenging. Texas, for instance, led a group of states with Republican governors who beat back Obama’s order easing immigration rules for parents by citing the need to pay for processing new driver’s licenses. “The state attorneys general are in a terrific position to bring these lawsuits, to try to check the federal government,” says Raymond Brescia, an Albany Law School professor who has studied the trend. “They have the resources to do this.” Many of the lawsuits have been triggered by Trump’s effort to reverse actions taken by his predecessor. “The administration came in very aggressively to dismantle a lot of the framework for environmental and human health protection,” Bernard says. “The most effective way to resist that is through litigation.” If unsuccessful at repealing Obamacare, Trump has talked about letting it collapse. That could lead to a lawsuit based on the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, which requires that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” “Donald Trump doesn’t follow the rule of law,” says Sean Rankin, executive director of the Democratic Attorneys General Association. “This is not something that we’ve seen before.”’Constitutional crisis’ That was the theme of a panel discussion Wednesday featuring the litigators behind three lawsuits that accuse Trump of profiting as president from his private businesses, which may violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. The first of them was filed on Jan. 23 at 9 a.m. — the first business day following Trump’s inauguration. “We believe he’s creating an unprecedented constitutional crisis,” said District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, who filed one of the lawsuits along with Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department would comment on the rash of ongoing litigation, much of which is triggered by Freedom of Information Act requests that go unanswered. President Trump has been sued for mixing business with pleasure by groups seeking a list of visitors to his Mar-a-Lago retreat. (Photo: DON EMMERT, AFP/Getty Images) Occasionally, those lawsuits result in quick victories. The administration recently agreed to turn over visitor logs for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Fla. One of the litigants, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said it would release the logs publicly when they’re received in September. Another watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is among four groups challenging Trump’s fledgling voter fraud commission. It’s also seeking to make public the intelligence agencies’ report on Russian interference in last year’s election, as well as Trump’s tax returns. 165 Document ID: 0.7.14363.35675-000003 20180129-0023885 Other groups suing over the new commission include the ACLU, the Lawyers? Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the NAACP Legal and Edumtional Defense Fund, which claims the panel?s purpose is to discriminate against minorities. Those at the bottom of the nation?s social and economic ladder immigrants, refugees, students, consumers are among those who stand to bene?t from the lawsuits. ?These are often populations that don?t have a lobbyist? says American Oversight?s executive director, Austin Evers. ?Sometimes, courts are the only avenue to protect them." on-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.35675-000003 20180129-0023886 TI-IE ATTORNEY WS BRIEFING PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JusmE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF TUESDAY, JULY 18, 2017 7:30 AM EDT Non?Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000002 20180129-0025446 on-Responsive Record Non-Responsive Record CIVIL RIGHTS: Trump Voter Commission Responds To Group?s Lawsuit. The (7/17, Ramer) reports that President Trump's ?commission on election fraud continues to defend its request for detailed voter information in coun ahead of its ?rst meeting later this week." A suit fled by the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington argues that ?the commission should have completed an assessment Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000002 20180129-0025458 on-Responsive Record of privacy concerns before making the request.? The group has ?updated its complaint to add the director of White House Information technology to its suit after the commission said a repurposed computer system in that of?ce would store the data. In a response fled Monday, the commission argued neither the commission nor the of?ce that will store the data is an agency required to complete the privacy assessment.? The commission contended ?that there is nothing wrong with one government entity sharing public information with another and that the privacy group has not made a case that any of its members would be harmed." Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000002 20180129-0025459 on-Responsive Record on-Responsive Record 3:00 PM House Dems host forum on voting rights and privacy under the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity Congressional Black Caucus and House Committee on the Judiciary Democrats host forum on voting rights and privacy concerns related to recent requests made by Presidential Commission on Election Integrity Co-chair Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, held ahead of the Commission?s ?rst meeting tomorrow. Participants include CBC Chair Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond, House Committee on the Judiciary Ranking Member John Conyers, and other Members of Congress, while panel features Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan-Grimes, Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000002 20180129-0025485 on-Responsive Record Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights' Wade Henderson, Eledronic Privacy Information Center? Marc Rotenberg, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law?s Kristen Clarke, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund Associate Director Counsel Janai Nelson Location. Rayburn House Of?ce Building Rm 2247, Washington, DC house. gov/ II.) 0 ll. .- on- Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000002 20180129-0025486 DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE NE WS CLIPS PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JusmE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF TUESDAY, JULY 18, 2017 7:30 AM EDT on-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000004 20180129-0025715 on-Responsive Record Good News For Russia: 15 States Use Easily Hackable Voting Machines By Jessim Schulberg Hu?ington Post, July 17, 2017 In 2006, Princeton computer science professor Edward Felten received an anonymous message offering him a Diebold AccuVote TS, one of the most widely used touch-screen voting machines at the time. Manufacturers like Diebold touted the touch-screens, known as direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, as secure and more convenient than their paper-based predecessors. Computer experts were skeptical, since any computer can be vulnerable to viruses and malware, but it was hard to get ahold of a touch-screen voting machine to test it. The manufacturers were so secretive about how the technology worked that they often required election of?cials to sign non-disdosure agreements preventing them from bringing in outside experts who could assess the machines. Felten was intrigued enough that he sent his 25-year-old computer science graduate student, Alex Halderman, on a mission to retrieve the AccuVote TS from a trenchcoat-clad man in an alleyway near New York?s Times Square. Felten?s team then spent the summer working in secrecy in an unmarked room in the basement of a building to reverse-engineer the machine. In September 2006, they published a research paper and an accompanying video detailing how they could spread malicious 35 Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000004 20180129-0025749 code to the AccuVote TS to change the record of the votes to produce whatever outcome the code writers desired. And the code could spread from one machine to another like a virus. That was more than a decade ago, but Georgia still uses the AccuVote TS. The state is one of five ― the others are Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina ― that rely entirely on DREs for voting. Ten other states use a combination of paper ballots and DRE machines that leave no paper trail. Many use a newer version of the AccuVote known as the TSX ― even though computer scientists have demonstrated that machine, too, is vulnerable to hacking. Others use the Sequoia AVC Advantage, which Princeton professor Andrew Appel demonstrated could be similarly manipulated in a 2007 legal filing. Appel bought a Sequoia machine online for $82 and demonstrated that he could remove 10 screws and easily replace the Sequoia’s memory card with a modified version that would alter the outcome of an election. Election security, typically a niche topic, emerged as a mainstream concern last summer after the Democratic National Committee announced that Russian hackers had penetrated their computer systems. The DNC hack was an early indication that Moscow had decided to interfere with the U.S. presidential election, raising alarms that their efforts could extend to the vulnerable touch-screen machines that record millions of votes around the country. By the time the cyberattack became public, it was too late to replace them, but in the year since the DNC hack revelations, there has been little tangible progress in securing America’s voting machines. “Basically nothing has changed, except that we are now at least more aware of the threat,” said Halderman, who is now a computer science professor at the University of Michigan. “Ten years ago, had you said a foreign government is going to try to hack U.S. election equipment, I’d say it’s technically possible but so unlikely. But what we saw in 2016 was a concerted attempt by a foreign power to attack election infrastructure.” Verified Voting Computer scientists like Halderman, Appel and Felten have been warning states about the risks of DRE machines for over a decade, urging them to replace touch-screen machines with paper ballots that can be read with an optical scanner and easily audited after an election. Paper ballots create a physical copy of the voter’s choice that can be checked against the results; with DRE machines, it’s impossible to verify whether the choice the person intended to select is, in fact, what the machine recorded. Felten even started to post pictures of unguarded voting machines on a blog to show how easily a hacker could access them. Most states have listened and gradually replaced their touch-screen voting equipment with paper ballots or added “voter verifiable paper audit trail” printers (VVPAT) to their DRE machines that prompt the voter to confirm their selections on a separate paper record before the computer logs the vote. But in close elections, security weaknesses in even a handful of states risk swinging the outcome. During a House congressional hearing in September, Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice University who studied under Appel and Felten, warned that none of the systems used to register voters, cast votes or tabulate the outcome “are ready to rebuff attacks from our nation-state adversaries, nor can we replace them in time to make a difference.” “Even if nothing goes wrong, and all this turned out to be nothing but hot air,” Wallach said at the time, “we should treat these events as a warning.” Even if nothing goes wrong, and all this turned out to be nothing but hot air, we should treat these events as a warning. Dan Wallach, computer science professor, on Russian election interference On Nov. 7, the day before last year’s elections, former CIA Director James Woolsey flagged DRE voting machines as a key vulnerability. “If I were a bad guy from another country who wanted to disrupt the American system … I think I’d concentrate on messing up the touch-screen systems,” he told Fox News. Russian hackers tried to access election-related computer systems in at least 21 states during last year’s election, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Intelligence officials say there is no evidence that hackers changed any votes. But experts like Halderman, who was able to infiltrate a voting machine while he was just a student, have no doubt that Russian intelligence operatives have the capability to change votes. Halderman testified before a Senate panel last month that DHS has not performed computer forensics on any of these DREs in order to prove that there wasn’t any tampering or attempted tampering during last year’s election. HuffPost reached out to the five states that rely exclusively on DRE machines and several states that use a mix of electronic machines and paper ballots. Election officials cited the high cost of replacing their electronic machines and insisted that they were taking the necessary precautions to ward off cyber-intruders and verify the results. Meg Casper Sunstrom, press secretary for the Louisiana secretary of state, was dismissive of the criticism from computer scientists. “None of them have ever worked in an election,” said Sunstrom, arguing that the machines are secure because they are tested before and after the election, locked and secured with a tamper-proof seal before voting begins and are never connected to the internet. 36 Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000004 20180129-0025750 And although there is no paper trail to audit, Sunstrom says the computer printout of the vote totals allows officials to verify that the number of votes cast matches the number of voters who signed in at each precinct. The computer scientists lobbying against DREs aren’t convinced, however. Machines don’t need to be connected to the internet to be infected with malware, and the computer printouts “provide no protection whatsoever against hacked machines,” Halderman wrote in an email. “Someone who hacks the machine can cause it to print out whatever they want. My group did that with the Diebold DREs we hacked, for instance.” Bloomberg/Getty Images A Diebold electronic voting machine is demonstrated in New York in 2004. The touch-screen voting machines in Louisiana are more than 10 years old, and the state is looking to replace them ― though Sunstrom says they don’t plan to use paper ballots because “people don’t like paper ballots at all!” Even in jurisdictions where election officials want to get rid of their touch-screen machines, most states don’t have the money to purchase new equipment. After the George W. Bush-Al Gore recount debacle in 2000, when punch-card voting machines rendered some ballots unreadable, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, which has provided states with over $3 billion to modernize their equipment. All 50 states took the money, and most of them used it to buy touch-screen DRE voting machines. The act, passed in 2002, “fundamentally changed the market for voting machines,” election experts Lawrence Norden and Christopher Famighetti wrote in a Brennan Center for Justice report. By 2006, 38 percent of registered voters used electronic voting machines, compared with 12 percent in 2000. But within a few years, demonstrations of how vulnerable those new machines are to tampering caused most jurisdictions to switch to paper ballots. Last November, at least 80 percent of voters made their selections on a paper ballot or an electronic machine that also produces a paper trail, the Brennan Center found. The Brennan Center estimates that replacing the country’s paperless voting machines would cost $130 million to $400 million ― a fraction of what Congress allocated in 2002. But most states have already spent the money they got from the federal government, and some of those still using touch-screen systems are simply accustomed to their convenience. When election officials argue that their DRE machines are secure, it’s hard to tell if they really doubt warnings from experts or if they are reluctant to cast doubt on machines they can’t afford to replace. Officials are “sensitive to the risk of undermining confidence in elections,” said Felten, who went on to serve in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama. “That can make it difficult to have straightforward conversations about the risks that exist.” New Jersey, which is among the states that rely entirely on electronic voting machines, passed a law in 2005 requiring all voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper record by Jan. 1, 2008, ahead of the state’s presidential primary. But the law was extended and ultimately never implemented because of funding issues. Upgrading the state’s voting systems was projected to cost $19 million. “That $19 million is going to be used to help people who can’t find jobs, feed their families or heat their homes,” Assemblywoman Joan Quigley said in 2009. Part of the reason it is so difficult to get the nation equipped with secure voting equipment is the decentralized nature of elections in the U.S. There are about 8,000 election jurisdictions in the country, and procedures are regulated at the state level. The Help America Vote Act created an Election Assistance Commission, but its guidelines are voluntary and “not at all rigorous,” Halderman argues. Lawmakers have, by and large, been hesitant to impose more restrictive standards on states out of fear that they’ll be accused of federal overreach. Donna Curling, a 62-year-old stay-at-home mother in Georgia, spent two years traveling to Washington to lobby lawmakers to pass a law requiring states to use election equipment that would leave a paper trail. Members of Congress were sympathetic to her concerns about the electronic machines used in her home state, but most ― especially Republicans, she recalled ― said it wasn’t the federal government’s place to tell states how to run elections. Curling stopped making the trips to D.C. in 2009, after years of unsuccessful conversations with lawmakers. “It takes over your life,” she said. But then Curling read a news story in March about a data breach at Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Systems, which tests and programs Georgia’s voting machines, and decided it was time to get involved again. Curling filed a lawsuit against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp earlier this year in an effort to force the use of paper ballots in the June 20 congressional runoff election, in which Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff. Fulton County Clerk Cathelene Robinson wrote in June that the Curling’s “concern that the DRE voting system lack a verification feature is legitimate” but ultimately denied the request, citing a lack of evidence and a sovereign immunity clause that applies to the secretary of state. Curling filed another lawsuit earlier this month, this time asking the judge to overturn the June 20 election results and get rid of the state’s electronic voting machines. She says she isn’t motivated by a preference in candidates but by a concern that it’s 37 Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000004 20180129-0025751 impossible to know who really won the election with the equipment the state currently uses. While Curling identi?es as a Democrat, one of her co-plaintiffs is a registered Republican. This isn?t a partisan issue, this is about voting, the cornerstone of our democracy, a sacred right that deserves protection under the law. Donna Curling, plaintiff in Georgia lawsuit to cease use of DRE voting machines ?This isn?t a partisan issue, this is about voting, the cornerstone of our democracy, a sacred right that deserves protection under the law," Curling said in an interview. ?As citizens, I feel we have the right to demand transparency to verify that our true intent was conveyed." Even if the ?ght isn?t partisan for Curling, party politics have certainly tainted the issue of election security. President Donald Trump still casts doubt over whether Russia interfered in last year?s election, despite the intelligence community?s assessment. Instead of encouraging states to bolster the security of the voting machines, the Trump administration is asking them to hand over sensitive information about voters as part of a voter fraud commission. Aggregating voters? names, birth dates, voting history and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers into one place presents a gold mine for hackers, warned former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Tmmp?s stance on election security makes it hard for Republicans to publicly advocate changes to voting machines, since doing so would imply that Russian interference, not voter fraud, was the main problem with last year?s election. Some Trump allies have followed the president?s lead on the Russia hadting issue including Kemp, who is now running for Georgia governor and recently told The Washington Post he doesn?t ?necessarily believe" that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections. ?The people who own the voting systems in Georgia actually don?t believe there?s a pressing threat!" said Richard DeMillo, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech who ?agged problems with Georgia?s voting machines back in 2008. If states want to patch the weaknesses in their election infrastructure before the 2018 midterm elections, they will need to act immediately. And that will likely require a new funding commitment from Congress. Wallach, the computer scientist who told lawmakers last year to treat the 2016 hack as a warning, is not optimistic that politicians will heed his advice. ?Somehow support for election integrity in the face of the Russian threat has become entangled with support for President Trump, which means that we don?t have the bipartisan support that would be helpful in getting things done," Wallach said. Non-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.15489-000004 20180129-0025752 TI-IE ATTORNEY WS BRIEFING PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JusmE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF THURSDAY, JULY 13, 2017 7:30 AM EDT on-Responsive Record Document ID: 011436335035 20180129-0027020 on-Responswe Record Non-Responsive Record Groups Suing To Block Trump Commission?s Request For Voter Data. McClatchy (7/12, Maake, 95K) reports that President Trump?s ?election fraud commission is? drawing criticism ?not only for requesting mass amounts of voter information but also for including two key members who have been accused of championing legislation that would suppress voter participation along partisan lines?: Kansas Secretary of State Kris chach (R), who is vice chair of the commission, and Hans von Spakovsky, who ?has a history ?ghting voter fraud." McClatchy says that the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the ACLU, among other groups, have ?led suit seeking to block the commission?s request for voter data. Document ID: 011436335035 20180129-0027034 DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE NE WS CLIPS PREPARED FOR THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTCE BY BULLETIN INTELLIGENCE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SENIOR STAFF SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2017 7:30 AM EDT on-Responsive Record Document ID: 0.7.14363.34080-000004 20180129-0027290 on-Responsive Record Combating A Real Threat To Election Integrity By The Editorial Board New York Times, July 8, 2017 Russia?s meddling in the 2016 election may not have altered the outcome of any races, but it showed that America?s voting system is far more vulnerable to attack than most people realized. Whether the attad