Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee sent a letter on Monday to chairman Trey Gowdy requesting that he subpoena the Department of Homeland Security to produce documents they claim officials have withheld from Congress related to Kremlin-backed efforts to hack at least 21 state election systems in the 2016 vote.
The committee’s top Democrat, Reps. Elijah Cummings, said in a statement, “Russia attacked our states in the last election to help Donald Trump get elected President. Why is the Trump Administration now concealing from Congress documents showing exactly how Russia did it?”
In testimony to Congress last June, DHS officials admitted that they had knowledge of Russian attempts to break into the electoral systems of 21 states, although there was no evidence of direct vote-count tampering. Subsequent reports put the number of states targeted by Russian hackers even higher.
In October, committee Democrats requested that DHS provide copies of the notification letter officials sent warning of the hacks, Mr. Cummings said. The states identified include; Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Illinois, Alaska, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware.
According to Mr. Cummings, all they received back from DHS was “one email containing a short script that Department employees apparently read over the phone to state election officials.”
“Chairman Gowdy needs to issue this subpoena so we can get answers and help states defend the integrity of their systems in the upcoming 2018 elections,” Rep. Robin Kelly said in statement.
The Democrats asked Mr. Gowdy to issue the DHS a subpoena to produce all necessary documents by Feb. 5.
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
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