As the country learned today that President Donald Trump has issued no orders during his first thirteen months in office to address ongoing attacks by Russian election hackers, NBC News broke yet another story ahead of the 2018 elections.
NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE: As of January 2017, U.S. intel had substantial evidence that 7 states had been “compromised” by Russia prior to or during the 2016 presidential election. https://t.co/MNfmv5vUaa@CynthiaMcFadden reports tonight on @NBCNightlyNews.
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 27, 2018
President Obama received intelligence just days ahead of Trump’s inauguration that websites and databases of state voting systems were successfully hacked in 2016.
Russian operatives compromised election systems in seven states in 2016: NBC News https://t.co/5kumTESvhD
— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) February 28, 2018
‘The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.
‘Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.
‘Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.’
NBC is reporting that Russian hackers penetrated the IT assets (not necessarily election-related systems) of seven states in the leadup to the 2016 election. Obama admin did not tell the states b/c they lacked the clearances for extremely sensitive info. https://t.co/WVgwpLIaHW pic.twitter.com/Kl8VWNBpdv
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) February 27, 2018
While Trump will surely raise questions (and accusations, and calls to lock Obama up) about the fact that Obama knew about the breach during his last few days in office, he’ll only be deflecting from the fact that he’s been in office for 403 days and has willfully ignored the threat despite warnings by intelligence officials.
Featured image via Getty/Mikhail Svetlov