Obama orders review of foreign attempts to hack U.S. election

WASHINGTON — President Obama has ordered the nation's intelligence agencies to conduct a full review of attempts by foreign hackers to influence U.S. elections — and he wants a report before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

The review will look back to the past three presidential elections, and look for evidence of hacking beyond the the already disclosed hacks of Democratic campaign emails that intelligence officials have attributed to Russia.

“We may have crossed into a new threshold, and it is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what has happened and to impart some lessons learned,” Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters at a breakfast arranged by the Christian Science Monitor Friday morning.

Deputy White House press secretary Eric Schultz said Friday the review was not an effort to undermine the legitimacy of President-elect Donald Trump's win in November.

“I want to be clear here that this is not an effort to challenge the outcome of the election,” he said. “The president has gone out of his way to provide for the seamless transition of power.”

There were indications of malicious cyber activity in the 2008 and 2016 elections, but not in 2012. But given the recent concerns, the president ordered the intelligence community to “go back with what we know now to use every tool possible as a means of due diligence," Schultz said.

"What the president asked for is a review to look at malicious activity timed to our presidential election cycle, and so it will be broader than just looking at this past election," he said. “I think that this is going to be a deep dive. This will be a review that is broad and deep at the same time. They’re going to look at where the activity leads them to look at.”

Much of that review will be classified, but will be shared with Congress and state elections officials. “We’re going to make public as much as we can,” Schultz said.

Trump has consistently said he is not sure there was hacking, and if there was, whether Russia was behind it. He told Time magazine in an interview published this week that he did not agree with the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind the hacks.

“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe they interfered,” he said. Asked if the intelligence statements were politically driven, Trump said, “I think so.”

U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe Russia actively attempted to interfere with the U.S. presidential election, including a hack of the Democratic National Committee's email system.

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An Oct. 7 joint statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security said, "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations."

The specific instances outlined included:

► Emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee

► Emails from that hack given to WikiLeaks

► Scanning and probing of state election-related systems

"The activities were intended to interfere with the U.S. election process and are “not new to Moscow — the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there,” the October statement said.

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said Friday that Russia's cyber-attacks are no surprise to the House Intelligence Committee.

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"I’ve said many times, the Intelligence Community has repeatedly failed to anticipate Putin’s hostile actions. Unfortunately the Obama administration, dedicated to delusions of ‘resetting’ relations with Russia, ignored pleas by numerous Intelligence Committee members to take more forceful action against the Kremlin’s aggression. It appears, however, that after eight years the administration has suddenly awoken to the threat.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said a full review of election-related cyber-attacks was essential to protecting the integrity of democracy in the United States, and would have been whatever the outcome of the election.

“Any administration should be deeply troubled by Russia’s attempt to tamper with our elections,” she said.