Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott say the FBI has agreed to brief them within the next few weeks on its contention that Russians hacked “at least one” county in Florida during the 2016 presidential election.
The FBI’s claim first surfaced last year and has been disputed by state officials, who cite no evidence of tampering and note federal officials have offered no information elaborating on the specifics of the assertion.
The assertion re-emerged earlier this month when the 448-page Mueller investigation report stated on pages 50-51 that “at least one Florida county government” was compromised prior to the 2016 presidential election.
“They won’t tell us which county it was. Are you kidding me? Why would you not say something immediately?” DeSantis said during a Thursday press conference in Miami. “I think finally next week we’re going to get somebody, or maybe the week after we’re going to have somebody come brief us on what happened.”
DeSantis said state officials and voters need to know which county was hacked.
“We’re going to make it public,” he said. “Unless somehow it is classified. I think the public has a right to know what may have happened.”
Scott, who was governor when the alleged breach occurred, wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray after the Mueller report was released requesting it share its information with state officials.
Scott spokesperson Chris Hartline told the Associated Press Thursday that the FBI had “reached out and is working on scheduling a briefing with Senator Scott in the next few weeks.”
According to Mueller’s report, during the summer and fall of 2016, the GRU, Russia's foreign intelligence agency, attempted to exploit “known software vulnerabilities on websites of state and local governmental entities."
Those efforts included sending “spearfishing” emails to more than 120 email accounts used by Florida county elections officials and employees of contractors that provide voting technology in the days before the 2016 election, the report states.
“We understand the FBI believes that this operation enabled the GRU to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government,” the report states.
The report’s claim varies only slightly from a June statement by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security [DHS] that Florida was among 21 states that were “targeted” and one of seven where electoral systems were compromised in 2016.
The June DHS report contradicted September 2017 assurances from the department that attempts to hack Florida elections system were unsuccessful, then-Secretary of State Ken Detzner said last July.
In 2018, state officials note, DHS Secretary Kristen Nielsen and Wray told Detzner in a letter that “we have not seen new or ongoing compromises of state or local election infrastructure in Florida.”
State officials say they want to know why and how that assessment changed last summer and was repeated in the Muller report, despite contradictory assurances from other federal officials.
“We’re looking for answers,” DeSantis said.
Hillary Clinton on Tuesday offered her own “answers” to the state’s query, claiming without presenting evidence that Russians hacked into the election systems in all 67 Florida counties.
“Just recently, the government, our government, finally acknowledged that the Russians were in the county election systems of every county in Florida,” Clinton said during a Time 100 moderated discussion in New York.
Newly appointed Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, the state’s top elections official, said there is no information to “support Hillary Clinton’s claims” that all of the state’s election systems were infiltrated.
“I spoke with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security when the Mueller report was released and they assured me that Florida’s 2016 election results were not compromised in any way,” Lee said in a statement.
John Haughey is a Watchdog.org contributor covering primarily Florida news.
