Obama’s cybersecurity czar: ‘NO evidence Russia hacked election’

(National Sentinel) Election 2016: President Obama’s trusted cyber security expert just said that he is certain – certain, mind you – that the Russians did not “hack” the presidential election last fall, but if you didn’t know that you are excused: No major U.S. media is reporting it.

Rather, it’s being reported in Israel, because former White House Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel was giving an interview to Israel Army Radio, not American media.

As reported by two trusted Israeli sources (here and here), Daniel said he is confident that last year’s election outcome did indeed reflect the will of the American people.

“I certainly think that the Russians or anyone else — they certainly didn’t change any votes, so that the votes that were cast properly reflect the votes of the American people,” Daniel said, as reported by the Times of Israel.

The news site reported further:

The FBI is also investigating ties between Trump’s staff and Moscow figures. US security agencies have said they discovered widespread attempts by Russian hackers to access voter details and have pointed the finger at Moscow as being behind the hack and subsequent leak of Democratic National Committee emails.

However, earlier this month US officials told the Senate committee that the cyber-assaults did not affect the eventual vote count.

This is the clearest admission yet from the Obama administration – and it certainly comes from someone who would be in the know regarding cybersecurity and hacking issues – that the entire Democrat- and Left-wing media-driven “Russia hacked the election” to help Donald J. Trump “steal” it from Hillary Clinton is nothing but a hoax.

This admission also exposes the Team Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative as a lie. Consider: If there is no evidence of ballot tampering, what was there to “collude” about?

Whether Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee, tried to hack the Republican National Committee or broke into Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s email account is of little consequence, considering that Moscow and Washington have been alternately attempting to undermine each other’s political systems for decades.

So, the two principle questions – did the Russians change election results via their “hacking,” and was their collusion between Team Trump and Moscow to hijack the election results – have now been answered.

No, and no.

Can we move on now?

BUSTED? Inspector general probing Obama DHS cyberattacks on Georgia electronic balloting

(NationalSentinel) It was one of the most egregious (and under-reported) stories to come out of the November elections: Officials in Georgia accused the Obama administration of attempting to hack into the state’s electronic balloting system, either as political payback for refusing federal assistance, or for spite–or both.

Either way, we’re about to find out because the Trump administration has launched an investigation in the shenanigans, The Daily Caller is reporting exclusively.

The site noted:

Federal officials have launched an investigation into why the Department of Homeland Security hacked into the Georgia state governmental network, including its election system, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

John Roth, inspector general for DHS, wants to know why the agency broke protocol on its way to 10 unprecedented attacks on the system overseen by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp — who is also one of the most vocal critics about the Obama administration’s attempt to designate local and state election machinery as part of federal “critical infrastructure.”

A Jan. 17 letter from Roth notified Kemp his office was officially “investigating a series of ten alleged scanning events of the Georgia Secretary of State’s network that may have originated from DHS-affiliated IP addresses.” A firewall in Georgia’s system thwarted each attempt.

Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and Kemp have clashed over a federal government designation of election systems as “critical infrastructure.” Kemp called it “political power play to federalize elections.”

Not so coincidentally, in August, DHS reached out to states offering “assistance” to help protect their electronic balloting systems from potential cyberattacks, but several states, including potential “swing states” (including Georgia) declined, telling the Obama administration, essentially, ‘We got this.’

The next thing you know, at least one of those states–Georgia–was sounding the alarm that its systems were indeed attacked (unsuccessfully) from DNS addresses that came from the Department of Homeland Security.

Less than two weeks before he left office, Johnson outraged both GOP and Democrat secretaries of state when he suddenly announced that federal balloting was “critical infrastructure” and, thus, now subject to federal oversight. Voting has traditionally been handled by the states.

The Daily Caller noted further the sinister nature of the DHS probes:

If Roth’s investigation shows Johnson or his subordinates deliberately used federal cybersecurity resources to penetrate a state election system in order to pressure a state official over a policy dispute, it could represent a significant scandal for Johnson and for the outgoing Obama administration.

The “scans” are attacks to test security weaknesses in a network. It’s called the electronic equivalent of “rattling doorknobs” to see if they’re unlocked — or on a darker side, to send a message to a recipient.

Georgian IT specialists traced 10 such scans back to a DHS IP address. DHS officials confirmed the attacks came from an unnamed contractor attached to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, a part of DHS.

To be sure, this entire sordid episode is no doubt part of legitimizing the false narrative that “Russia hacked the election” to Donald J. Trump’s benefit and to harm Hillary Clinton taken to the extreme.

Title 18 of the federal code makes it a federal crime to “having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization” and to damage or impair the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information, The DC reported, adding that the penalty could be a fine and up to 20 years for each offense.

“Georgia also has several computer fraud and abuse statutes that could apply to the DHS contract employee and to other officials in Georgia who are implicated in the effort,” the site noted. “Four of the 10 attacks against the Georgia network occurred as Kemp was about to talk to DHS officials, or coincided with his public testimony about his opposition to the critical infrastructure designation.”

Kemp has written the Trump administration and asked the president to instruct his new DHS secretary, John Kelly, to investigate further.