the bottom line of this is two one of the biggest russian things. the first is that the press hoaxers and truthers in d.c. must be throwing off the intel works for the american people. they are supposed to find out community i think immediately as a national security threat information that is prudent to posed by china is growing by their decisions about who they the day. want to be the president, that's clear and why republican politicians, what their lawmakers are continuing to connections are and in this press the f.b.i. for a briefing case what the connection would on other efforts of the chinese be to the chinese communist government and operatives to party within the biden family considering joe biden is going influence our politicians. to be the next president of the >> sandra: brand-new united states. the second is they have an developments in the hunter obligation to be fair. biden tax probe this morning. they have an obligation to a.p. reporting president trump treat politicians fairly, tough may push the justice department but fair and as we saw to appoint a special counsel. throughout the russia we'll have much more on all investigation, throughout the last four years of this this when senator rand paul joins us in moments. administration we saw so many but first fox team coverage for off the record sources that ended up not being true and you you this morning, katie pavlich have the story of hunter biden is standing by. kristin fisher is live at the with all this on the record white house but we begin with rich edson on the eric swalwell information and details and tangible information that the story live from washington this media could look at and they refused. morning. rich, republicans want him off >> sandra: we'll see where the potential call for a special of this major committee. >> that's right. counsel goes on that now as the 17 of them house speaker nancy a.p. is reporting that pelosi gets a letter from 17 president trump may push the d.o.j. to do just that. house republicans saying that meanwhile, from the hunter pelosi should drop congressman biden story to the eric eric swalwell from a top swalwell story and the media coverage of that, put this up congressional committee writing on the screen. his close interactions with this is our brain room that put chinese intelligence services, together the total time of however unintentional they may coverage from the mainstream be are an unacceptable national security risk. we urge you to immediately media on the swalwell store owe. remove representative swalwell from his position on the house zero from cbc. zero from nbc. intelligence committee. 2 plus minutes abc. last week axios reported 2 plus minutes cnn. suspected chinese intelligence agent christine fang targeted swalwell when he was a city 3:53 on msnbc. 17 republicans believe this is such a big story and national councilman and interacted with him at multiple events for security threat that he should be pulled from the house several years. fundraiseed for his 2014 intelligence committee. so is that story getting the congressional reelection campaign and helped place one attention that it deserves from intern in his office. the mainstream media, katie? the republicans say to have an >> absolutely not. undisclosed relationship with a it is obvious the mainstream foreign asset like that is dangerous. media is interested in foreign >> why speaker pelosi hasn't taken action. interference. you've watched her again and it should be for everyone again treat her responsibility engaged in salacious dealings over the intelligence committee or caught in a spying situation with something less than seriousness. as congressman eric swalwell at this moment where we face was. grave national security threats. seems like they are only >> cheney and other republicans interested in foreign charge swalwell withheld that interference goes against republicans or a trump white information from the intelligence committee for five house. you talked about earlier, we years comparing it to democrats' demands in 2017. had an entire special counsel and attorney general recuse minority leader pelosi and himself for having a simple others called on jeff sessions walk-by meeting and hello with to resign after he said in his a russian ambassador and yet confirmation hearing he had no here we are with eric swalwell communications with the russians. sessions had met with the on the house intelligence committee after not disclosing russian ambassador. the fact that this situation swalwell points out he is accused of no wrongdoing and happened with a chinese spy allegedly who is now back in cooperated with the f.b.i. and cut off any contact with fang as soon as federal officials china. and it's pervasive and nancy notified him about her pelosi should be asking questions how far this goes. suspected spying. if there are any other members swalwell says the only reason of congress who have been compromised. >> sandra: she said she is not this story leaked political retribution. back to you. concerned. >> she should be. >> sandra: rich edson live from that's a big problem. washington thanks. >> trace: the associated press >> sandra: she said both aisles reporting this morning that were briefed on this years ago. president trump is pushing for we've had members of the house a special counsel in the hunter intelligence committee on this program, on this network who biden probe. say they were not briefed. meantime white house press they don't know who was secretary kayleigh mcenany is slamming the media saying they briefed, if anyone was indeed are ignoring the hunter biden briefed. according to nancy pelosi they were. so we'll continue to cover that and eric swalwell scandals. she called it bias by omission. story, both stories, katie pavlich. thank you. >> there have been quite a few >> thanks. >> trace: as early voting gets stories that not had a ton of underway in georgia a real coverage in the mainstream clear politics report say more media. last week we found out eric than 1700 voters there swalwell was infiltrated by an illegally cast two ballots in alleged chinese spy. guess how many minutes of the 2020 elections including the november presidential coverage it got on abc, nbc, election. the headline reads with u.s. senate runoffs near georgia is not prosecuting its cbs? zero. >> trace: what else is the unprecedented number of double white house press secretary voters. jonathan serrie live in atlanta. saying. >> in addition to the swalwell why the large number of double story the white house press voters? secretary is also frustrated >> hi, because of the pandemic that the investigation into the there were a record number of voters by absentee in georgia. president-elect's son, hunter biden, has not received more the secretary of state's office attention. she spent a significant amount mailed out absentee ballot of time talking about it in the applications to every registered voter on file. briefing room yesterday. so there were more >> interesting pre-election and opportunities for people to at post election coverage on the least attempt to double vote, whether they did this hunter biden scandal, which was deliberately or by mistake. not covered at all by many outlets and the lead-up to the according to real clear investigations the largest number of alleged double voerts election. "politico" october 19th. were in fulton county, a large hunter biden story is russian portion of atlanta, and this disinformation. dozens of former intel region leans strongly in favor officials say false yet again. of democrats. double voting is a crime in december 2, now "politico" georgia punishable by up to 10 reads justice department's interest in hunter biden years in prison. covered more than taxes. the investigation reports though the number of suspected interesting turn of events. good for those who covered what number voting felons is the was a story all along and not largest in state history they russian disinformation. learned no cases have been referred to the state attorney >> the associated press is reporting this morning that general for criminal president trump is considering pushing to have a special investigation. the 1700 ballots in question counsel appointed to advance the federal tax investigation from the june primary and in the hunter biden. november general election aren't enough to change the the president is interested in outcome of the presidential having another special counsel race in georgia. appointed to look into his own during a rally for democrat claims of election fraud even senate candidates raphael warnock and jon ossoff biden though his outgoing attorney general says the department has found none. the reason the president would ridiculed georgia's senators want a special counsel to be appointed is because it would for supporting an unsuccessful lawsuit to overturn the state's make those investigations so election results. much more difficult to kill in >> maybe your senators were a biden administration. but it remains to be seen if just confused. maybe they think they represent bill barr's replacement, the texas. well, if you want to do the bidding of texas, you should be current deputy attorney general, jeff rosen, if he running in texas, not in would go for it if this is georgia. something president trump does want. >> trace: an unknown. >> senators loeffler and perdue kristin fisher live in the white house. are trying to tie their >> sandra: let's go to katie challenge gears to radical elements of their parties and they are a republican firewall pavlich now. you just heard from sean against a democratic partisan hannity last night on his show takeover of the u.s. senate. back to you, trace. on the media ignoring the biden >> trace: jonathan serrie live story. in atlanta. thank you. here is more from sean. >> sandra: more now on the double vote claims in georgia. >> this is a federal criminal probe. it is involving money kentucky senator rand paul laundering. joins us. homeland security committee the biden family foreign will hold a hearing on voting corruption syndicate and we call that international pay for irregularities at 10:00 a.m. this morning. great to have you here this play scheme surrounding what morning. so what does all of this mean for the integrity of the are sketchy foreign oligarchs, chinese national and others. georgia runoffs knowing so much is at stake with this upcoming the media mob can't be bothered. election? turns out foreign interference >> you would think all of it isn't exactly important to them if they can't use it as a would be investigated and tried to be fixed before the election. so if you have 1700 people that political weapon against somebody with the last name voted twice you would think trump. >> sandra: is the media that maybe they need to be ignoring the hunter biden y bro charged and maybe not allowed to vote in the next election or one vote canceled out. you would think that people who voted illegally from commercial addresses would be purged from the rolls and they would check the death file and purge those who had died to make sure that they don't vote. i mean, we'll hear testimony this morning from nevada where 1500 people were deceased and should not have voted. 4,000 people were illegal aliens, and 15,000 voted from commercial addresses and you have to vote from a home address. >> sandra: what are we doing about it? >> courts aren't good at doing this. writ sent to get involved. so far the court has turned down all these appeals to look at the facts. no court has examined the facts. this is sort of historically true. courts don't like to do this. even worse than this is it is sort of obama, -- they took the crisis of covid and changed election law. not by changing it at the state legislature. they had secretary of state and governors simply by fiat change the law to say you can keep counting votes when the law didn't say that. so this election really was stolen in a way. it was stolen because what happened is people changed the law. how can you change the law without asking the state legislature to do this? and i'm disappointed that the courts haven't heard it. >> sandra: really interesting. we'll follow what comes from the 10:00 a.m. gathering where i know that's going to be discussed senator. meanwhile we topped our hour with two big stories that are seemingly ignored by the mainstream media, that is eric swalwell and hunter biden. in the case of hunter biden a.p. is reporting that president trump may be considering pushing for a special counsel to investigate hunter biden and his overseas business dealings and specifically taxes paid on some of his income. where does this go next? what do you want to see happen, senator? >> the committee that i'm on that will meet in a couple of minutes on electoral fraud we also investigated hunter biden and we submitted a report and i sent the report to the department of justice a month and a half ago asking for a criminal investigation. i'm glad it has commenced. i think the only way we can be assured it won't be swept under the rug is the u.s. attorney in delaware doing the investigation should not be fired by biden. this is going to be a very important thing. we'll find out the first week in the biden administration is he going to fire the prosecutor that is investigating his son or will he let him stay on? historically the u.s. attorneys are all let go from one administration to the next. i think in this case it will be a show of great deal of bias on biden's part if he fires the prosecutor that's looking into his son. >> sandra: i want to ask you about eric swalwell. what would your expectation be on that considering we've already seen how the president-elect has ignored questions from the media and by media i mean simply one of our reporters here from fox news channel asking really important questions about his overseas business dealings and that tax probe. >> i think he has also been dishonest when he said he knew nothing of his son's overseas activities. we have emails saying make sure you get a key for my dad, my mom, my uncle and the chinese national that gave me a 2.8 uncut diamond. a lot of things we should be allowed to ask the president. a lot of the media is not asking these questions. >> sandra: final thought on eric swalwell growing calls from my republicans who believe he should be removed from the house intelligence committee until they get more answers on his involvement with that suspected chinese spy and whether or not he is compromised. >> i think to be careful and to cautious he should resign from the intelligence committee. if he is not willing to do that he should be removed from intelligence committee. i also think what hypocrisy. this is the guy that was hurling stones and accusations, all kinds of false accusations at president trump. he is controlled by spies and this and. that he was the most over the top critic of president trump on russia collusion and turns out he is sleeping with a chinese -- my goodness, the hypocrisy is appalling and he really should be red faced and ashamed of himself and really probably ought to just resign from congress. >> sandra: a lot more on that coming up. appreciate your time this morning. thank you. >> thank you. >> trace: fox news alert on the threat from china. communist nation stepping up its efforts to steal trade secrets and personal data from the u.s. hundreds of millions of americans already falling victim. what is beijing's endgame? plus this. [shouting] >> trace: new york city restaurant owners trying to stay open. now they are facing a new threat. that story next. >> trace: time for top stories now. the fda authorizing the nation's first at-home covid test that delivers results in 15 minutes and can be bought over the counter. more than 20 million tests will be delivered to the u.s. by june. >> sandra: northeast gearing up for a major he snowstorm that could bring two feets of snow. it could bring snow from georgia to maine and expected the barrel through the region beginning later this afternoon. >> trace: new trouble for the big apple. the "new york post" reports that more police officers are leaving the nypd for long island and nassau county saying 50 officers have left the force in the past week alone. anti-cop protests, budget cuts and more restrictive legislation are among the reasons cited for the exodus. for more on these and other stories download the fox news app, scan the qr code on your screen or go to foxnews.com/app. >> sandra: stunning numbers on the growing hostility between washington and beijing as the f.b.i. now says it opened a new chinese counter intelligence investigation every 10 hours. lucas tomlinson has more from the pentagon. how many investigations into china are we talking about here? >> good morning, sandra. the f.b.i. director says out of 5,000 counter intelligence operations open right now and investigations half involve the chinese. liz cheney spoke about the threat. >> they're a real threat and we do not want to live in a world where the chinese communist party sets the rules. that is going to be a world in which their massive individual surveillance state is imposed on all of us. we have to stand up against it and america has to lead the way in doing that. >> a senior justice department official says 1,000 chinese students fled the united states over the summer after six were arrested. the students were sent here by the chinese military. >> five or six arrests were just the tip of the iceberg and honestly the size of the iceberg is one that i don't know that we or other folks realize how large it was when we began down that road. >> the pentagon is keeping an eye on russia. earlier today u.s. space command says russia tested an anti-satellite missile. it comes after president trump's national security advisor cut short an overseas trip to race back to the white house for meetings because russia's intelligence service has hacked many government computers. >> sandra: lucas, thank you. >> trace: records reviewed by fox news revealing that top facebook and twitter executive donated tens of thousands of dollars to biden's campaign and no money to president trump's. let's bring in our panel mo elleithee, a former communications director for the dnc and fox news contributor. matt gorman a former communications director for the national republican congressional committee. welcome both. mo, i want to play tucker carlson's take and get your response on the other side. watch. >> the clarity of the payoff here. even as joe biden is criticizing facebook, clearly didn't mean it, facebook's employees are sending him money, facebook's owners are working around the clock to get him elected spending a lot of -- hundreds of millions of dollars. i mean, they are basically buying the biden people. >> trace: the bottom line when it comes to big tech, political funding is awfully one sided. >> look, there is a lot of things about big tech i don't like. i don't like how they handle privacy. i don't like how they allow misinformation and disinformation on their site but the notion that there is an anti-conservative bias, there is no data to back that up. if you think the biden campaign liked what they saw on facebook this cycle then you completely missed the picture. the amount of conspiracy theories, anti-biden conspiracy theories that the platform allowed. here is what the data does show. that the most engaged with posts, eight of the top 10 oh are conservatives. the most shared news site is this network and breitbart. there is no data to back up this argument that the big tech giants are anti-conservative. lots of other things to go after them on but this isn't one the data backs up. >> trace: mo says there is no data. twitter spokesman said political ideology especially that of our employees plays no part in this process speaking about the fundraising. critics say it's hard to swallow when you let the ayatollah call for the destruction of israel but the president criticizes mail-in ballots and labeled as harmful. your thoughts. >> i completely agree twitter is an absolute joke and i think they will have a lot more scrutiny coming their way in the next couple of years. speaking as a conservative, they have completely destroyed their reputation from folks on the right. you make a great point. i was going to make it anyway. if you have the ayatollah who just over the weekend executed a journalist, able to tweet freely and you have them censoring conservatives, that's a total joke. i think that's why many on the right just view it as a cess pool has bias has come forward. >> trace: now the hunter biden investigation and the laptop is primary evidence one, the fact that they censored these "new york post" stories seems to be a little bit more bias than we originally thought. your thoughts on that? >> i think it shows a complication that these tech companies face. you know, they saw in 2016 how they were eviscerated by democrats for allowing stuff on their sites that did not have any backup in the public square. now they have a hesitation doing anything that appears like they are putting their thumb on the scale ahead of an election. before the election there really wasn't anything out there to back up any claims and in fact they were mainly debunked. many of them are still debunked but these platforms are trying to walk a line between being news services or just being an open town square. i don't think they're walking that line very well. >> trace: i have to say, matt, the final mo says they have been debunked. nobody on the biden camp has said -- they have not disputed any of these emails being actually valid. your final thoughts on this. mo points to there is a lot of people on the left who are concerned about facebook but there is no big ticket items they can point to, matt, that say hey, you did this to us and we think this is a disservice. your final thoughts. >> let's be very clear. the an must on the left from facebook changed from hillary clinton needing a culprit for her losing. the left loved facebook when obama was in office. i will caution this. it is important that republicans not fall into the same trap with facebook that hillary did. facebook didn't cost us the election and facebook -- that is not true and not a good look. we shouldn't fall into the trap that hillary did. >> trace: good conversation, gentlemen, thank you both. >> thanks. >> trace: more on this next hour with the ranking republican on the house oversight committee. kentucky congressman james comer will join us. >> sandra: okay. president-elect joe biden meanwhile nominating more of his cabinet members tapping a formal rival for transportation secretary. former indiana mayor pete buttigieg. biden is taking some criticism for mispronouncing democratic candidate jon ossoff's name. >> for your next united state senator, jon orsoff. >> sandra: they've spent $5 million on the senate runoff in georgia so far and raised $10 million for the two democratic candidates. >> trace: have you heard this? tom cruise ripping his film crew for not adhering to covid-19 guidelines. >> we are bringing thousands of jobs. i don't ever want to see it again ever. and if you don't do it, you're fired. if i see you do it again you're gone. >> trace: he blasted members of the crew for not being socially distant on set. apparently they were around a computer screen. cruise filming mission impossible 7 in london. the production was delayed in october after 12 people working on the film tested positive for coronavirus. split on this one. the idea is he made valid points. he just went off on these people and you would think there might be a little more diplomatic. >> sandra: his point is that they are able to operate, they're making the movie. it employs a lot of people, helps a lot of people to get back into the workforce let's be safe was the message. he gave it differently than you and i perhaps. >> trace: maybe just come here. >> sandra: maybe try that. restaurant owners in new york struggling to stay afloat under the new dining restrictions bracing for another gut punch. a major snowstorm is set to hit this city this afternoon. another historic school facing a big change. has cancel culture now come for abraham lincoln? 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apple. restaurants forced to shut down indoor dining due to covid restrictions will have to close the structures they built out on the city streets by 2:00 p.m. today. david lee miller is live on the ground with more. when is the storm expected to hit? >> sandra, the first few flakes should start to arrive by mid afternoon but the city has been preparing for this since yesterday. that's when they put the de-icing trucks on the street. this is expected to be the first big snowstorm to hit new york city in several years. as you point out among the hardest hit will be the restaurants. earlier this week all indoor dining was banned. to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. many restaurants were countsing on indoor dining to keep them in business. the temporary outdoor ventilated structures in the city streets that restaurants had built will have to be shut down so snowplows can do their job. it will effectively halt most outdoor dining. only the sidewalk tables are still allowed. bill deblasio talked about the economically painful decision. >> outdoor dining has been a big concern. we have all depended upon it a lot. to make sure people got their jobs back and livelihood. in terms of the street dining and outdoor dining in the streets itself the curb, that will be closed from 2:00 p.m. on ward. >> it's not just the restaurants that will be affected by the storm. city coronavirus testing sites will temporarily close down. vaccine distribution is not expected to be disrupted. more than 2,000 snowplows and 700 salt spreaders will be on the road. drivers are asked to stay away. no decision has been made about schools which only recently reopened for in-person learning. whether or not they will be open in session on thursday. the mayor said that remote learning is going to take place on thursday regardless of the weather and for many kids it looks like snow days, a rite of passage in new york, are going to be a thing of the past. >> sandra: david lee miller, thank you. >> trace: our next guest participated in the rally in time square yesterday. lauren lynch joins us now. the last thing -- welcome. the last thing you need right now is a big snowstorm. we are expecting 10 to 14 inches and because of that you will have to apparently take down all of your outdoor dining setup that you spent thousands of dollars putting up. but mayor bill deblasio says it is really in your best interest. listen to what he said. >> but we also want to be clear that when we expect major snow it is in their interest and everyone's interest to clear away as much of their equipment as possible to facilitate the snow cleaning and protect their equipment. >> trace: what do you say to the mayor who says this is best for everybody? >> i mean, no one is trying to have people dining out in the middle of a major snowstorm, whether there was a pandemic going on or not. people shouldn't be on the street. there is enough for first responders to get to our hospitals. and, you know, it's not that everything has to be removed. it is kind of -- that is a misnomer. you are supposed to reduce as much as possible but everybody just spent good money and the city helped supply sandbags and that in order to protect these structures. at the end of the day they only come out eight feet which is no different than cars are coming out. same level of damage that you see when a plow hits a car is what could happen to some people's outdoor dining platforms. >> trace: you were at the rally. we talked about this earlier in time square yesterday. one of your fellow restaurateurs. >> what will happen to us when we can't stay open? what is going to happen to all these restaurants that will close in a couple of weeks? he doesn't realize about that. why is he doing this to us? we're not the problem. we've been following everything that they asked us to do. >> trace: does it frustrate you the same politicians who have been saying for months they're following the science are now going after restaurants and they really don't have any science to follow? >> i mean, that's savannah speaking. i think she has 11 businesses, over 200 people working for her. going into the holidays like many people in new york and across the country is incredibly difficult due to all the shutdowns, the government shutdowns, the restrictions that are put in place on restaurants. we would really like the data to show -- if it said that it was 74% of covid tracing came back to restaurants, then people would be volunteering to close their doors. we care about our communities and we would never want that to happen. but i understand why she is that upset right now. these are people's livelihoods and this is not a new york problem. this is a national problem. that's why we need federal relief across the board all 50 states because at this point in time we have 110,000 bars and restaurants in the u.s. that have already shut down. 1,000 happen to be in new york city. >> trace: i have 10 seconds left. what would you tell the mayor or the governor if you had 10 seconds at a podium? >> i wouldn't. i would tell federal government they need to pass by this friday the restaurant act. it is crucial for this entire nation. i don't care if you are in borbon street in new orleans or time square. we need this or the restaurant industry is going to collapse. >> trace: best of luck to you, your fellow restaurant owners in the city. >> thank you so much. stay safe out there. >> sandra: the fox news alert now is the senate homeland security committee is about to hold a hearing as you heard from senator rand paul moments ago on irregularities in the 2020 election. a live look on capitol hill. we'll monitor it for news and bring you there when it begins. eric swalwell's ties to a suspected chinese spy. the latest, and questions about whether speaker pelosi will pull him off that house intelligence committee. >> any member of the house intelligence or senate intelligence committee has access to some of 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fund and what i want the country to become. >> sandra: he is considering dismissing enhancement of a man accused of two murders. the suspect could be eligible for parole and released from prison. william la jeunesse is live from our west coast newsroom. what is the argument behind the d.a.'s decision here? >> sandra, he is a liberal d.a. who doesn't believe prosecuting criminals to the fullest extent of the law improves public safety or aggravating factors to give longer sentences. almost a mutiny in the d.a.'s office and now he is asking defense attorneys to spy on his own attorneys and judges who refuse to follow his reforms. >> not a small amount of time. these can triple or more the sentences that these people should be facing based just on the conduct. >> the special directive eliminates cash bail, bans death penalty and orders his 800 deputies to not use enhancements like the gang affiliation or hate crime added to an assault charge to get more time behind bars. take the case of nelson. he killed a russian skateboarder and then shot a deputy in the head. charged with murder and robbery he wants prosecutors to drop enhancement for using a firearm and committing multiple murders. >> it is craziness to let the murderers out of jail early? these are violent crimes. i mean, he killed two people. my brother and another gentleman. and he gets to go free in 15 or 20 years? come on. >> in another case he wants to drop the great bodily injury enhancement against a 21-year-old while driving under the influence of drugs killed a man. it was his third the d.u.i. >> this is not justice. you can't randomly start changing and dropping charges. really look at what you are doing. this is devastating to us. >> so this directive applies to hundreds of past cases and those of future ones. what he is doing is revolutionary and his office said the d.a. is making decisions based on data, science and research, not fear and emotion. >> sandra: thank you. william la jeunesse on that for us and we'll have much more on that story when the sister of the fallen l.a. police deputy joins us a short time from now on this show. christina sal an owe speaking out about her brother's death and what is happening with his accused killer at 11:10 eastern time here on "america's newsroom." >> trace: branld new developments this morning in the hunter biden probe. is the president ready to name a special counsel to the case? chris bedford of the federalist joins us with that. should a billionaire be telling struggling small businesses why they should accept a shutdown? we'll talk to one restaurant owner about the bill gates backlash next. >> bars and restaurants in most of the country will be closed as we go into this wave. i think sadly that's appropriate. we made usaa insurance for members like martin. an air force veteran made of doing what's right, not what's easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that's how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin's family needs it with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that's what's right. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. ♪ usaa balanced nutrition for strength and energy. whoo-hoo! great tasting ensure with 9 grams of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, and nutrients to support immune health. >> bars and restaurants in most of the country will be closed as we go into this wave. tradeoffs have to be made. but the next 4 to 6 months really call on us to do our best because we can see that this will end. and you don't want somebody you love to be the last to die of coronavirus. >> sandra: that's bill gates suggesting restaurant shut downs are necessary to stop the surge of covid cases across the country. but is a billionaire the right person to be telling those owners to accept another round of this? joining us now to discuss it owner of two restaurants in california. important to point out he has been a big part of the covid cause donating a lot of money from his foundation toward finding a vaccine. it can be tough to listen to somebody worth $120 billion say stay home, stop the spread. i'm sure as a restaurant owner you have some feelings on that. >> thanks for having me, sandra. yes, i do have feelings on. that i'm not sure bill gates knows how much a jug of detergent costs let alone the human problem that we have with this. it's frightening to see when you have a team of employees that come to you crying not knowing where their next dollar is coming from. there is a human cost. there is something that's more important than just this one understanding of a single number. we have to look at the depression, the livelihoods, the christmases of all these people and their mental stability. it just can't be from the top down. >> sandra: something that hits home with me is the point you make about it's not just about you, it is not just about your restaurant. it is about the number of people that you are employing between those two restaurants, the number of family members that are dependent on them and how hard this is on a wide net of people. >> we've been blessed because we have a wonderful staff and they are part of our family. we spend our christmases and thanksgiving with them often at the restaurants in previous years. we employ husbands and wives and to know that we'll forsake them through one of the hardest times that they can imagine in their lives not just from fear of the pandemic but fear of putting a meal on the table and looking to the next stage and taking care of their children. i mean, we let go of who we are. it is not about us, it is that we're not willing to forsake the people that have come to depend on us during one of the hardest times of the year. we're here for them, not against them. >> sandra: it is a tough time of year in general for so many folks and to accept another round of shutdowns i know is brutal for your businesses. appreciate your time this morning and telling your story. thank you. our best to you. meanwhile as we mentioned top of the 9:00 hour, we are expecting on capitol hill the very first congressional hearing that will examine irregularities in the 2020 presidential election. it is about to be underway on capitol hill. the senate homeland security committee will be gathering testimony from key witnesses including the head of the u.s. election assistance commission. a former director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. we'll keep an eye on this hearing and bring our viewer any headlines as it happened. we'll find out how they'll set it up. what they expect to hear from some of these key witnesses. senator rand paul joined us last hour talking about the importance of what we're about to hear from this hearing room on capitol hill. >> trace: it is fascinating here. like rand paul says there are definitely documented incidents around the country where there has been some fraud. the question is was it enough to overturn. the answer so far has been no it's not. the timing is critical because we know a couple of days ago the electoral votes were cast. incoming president joe biden appears to be the incoming president january 20th. that appears to be the way the schedule will happen. but what they're trying to get at here is very important especially when you consider what happened in georgia, 1700 ballots double cast. those are all felonies. nobody is being cited for those felonies and being charged. >> sandra: a live look inside the hearing room. when it begins we'll go to it. a new report that president trump is setting his sights on a possible special prosecutor to look into the federal tax investigation of hunter biden. it would be a bid to block any efforts by the upcoming administration to stop the investigation. welcome to a brand-new hour of "america's newsroom." i'm sandra smith. >> trace: we have a bunch of things going on. i'm trace gallagher. the big question who would actually make the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate hunter biden? the associated press reports the president is weighing his options including the possibility of naming a special prosecutor himself. but senator rand paul says the current prosecutor should be kept on the case. allowing president-elect biden to show the investigation is fair and honest. >> we also investigated hunter biden and we submitted a report and i sent the report to the department of justice a month, month and a half ago asking for a criminal investigation. i'm glad it has commenced. i think the only way we can be assured it won't be swept under the rug is the u.s. attorney in delaware doing the investigation should not be fired by biden. >> sandra: back to capitol hill now. they have gaveled in. the senate homeland security committee holding a hearing on electoral irregularities. >> reduced faith in our institutions and the ongoing censorship of conservative perspective by biased media and social media adds fuel to the claims. senator grassley and my investigation and report on the conflicts of interest in foreign financial entanglements of the biden family is just one example of how media suppression can and does affect the outcome of an election. it is both amazing and galling that all of a sudden post election this has become a news story and a scandal worthy of investigation. with less than a month left in my chairmanship of this committee, the examination of irregularities in the 2020 election will be my last investigation and last hearing as chairman. but oversight into election security should continue into the next congress because we must restore confidence in the integrity of our voting system. as i said at the start, this effort should be bipartisan. in my statement announcing this hearing i stated its goal was to, quote, resolve suspicions with full transparency and public awareness. what's wrong with that? that is what good oversight can accomplish. unfortunately senators schumer and peters ignored my statement and instead chose to attack me in this hearing. as i comment in last thursday's hearing on early treatment of covid closed mindedness is a root cause of many problems we face. and just a quick aside about that hearing. about seven days ago. it was attacked unfortunately boycotted by democrat members of this committee except for a rather politically charged opening statement by senator peters. two of those doctors who had the courage to treat covid patients told me i think told one of them told the committee they're democrats. and they were disappointed by that boycotting by democrats that closed mindedness, that politically charged opening statement. but to prove the worthiness and value of that hearing, dr. corey, one of those democrats, a person showing immense courage in treating successfully covid patients, his opening statement has received more than 4.4 million views in just the last 7 or 8 days. obviously americans need that information. they have the right to know about early treatment. and they have the right to try early treatment. my last pitch before i return to this hearing if you or somebody you know gets covid, seek a doctor. again you need doctor participation in this. find a doctor who will at left consider and talk to you about early treatment. on with this hearing. in preparation for this hearing i asked my staff to find out as much as they could about basic election mechanics, control and data flow. much of the suspicion comes from a lack of understanding how everything works and how much variety there is in the way each precinct, county and state conducts their elections. even though decentralization makes it more difficult to understand the full process it dramatically enhances the security of our national elections. in addition to the witnesses testifying today, we spoke to state and local officials as well as suppliers of election machinery, equipment, and data. i believe the alleged irregularities can be organized to three basic categories. number one, lacks enforcement or violations of election laws and controls. two, allegations of fraudulent votes and ballot stuffings and three, corruption of voting software to add or switch votes. in the time we had it was impossible to examine every allegation. but many of these irregularities raise legitimate concerns and they do need to be taken seriously. so here is a brief summary of what we did learn. a lot of this should provide american public comfort in the integrity of our election system. first multiple controls do exist to help ensure election integrity. voter registration rules, election logs for in person and absentee vote balloting help prevent fraudulent voting. it is not a perfect system as we will hear in testimony today. we have increased the percentage of votes using paper ballots from 82% in 2016 to 95% in 2020. a lot of that had to do with the efforts of chris contributes recognizing it was -- an audit trail only if full or valid recounts occur. optical scanners, ballot marking machines and tabulateors should not be connected to the internet during voting. we found some do have the capability of being connected an allegations some were. once voting ends they print out a paper report and transmit voting data in digital form in two data streams from precinct, to the county level and then the state level. the first data stream, the official stream, is sent to the official state election management systems and the second unofficial stream is to the unofficial media reporting system to companies like addison research and associated press. there is no uniform method of transmission. it is not fully automated and thousands of human beings are involved in the process. so human error does occur. that is what paper back-ups and post election canvassing is designed to catch. today we'll hear testimony on how election laws in some cases were not enforced and how fraudulent voting did occur. as it always does. the question that follows is whether the level of fraud would alter the outcome of the election. this year in dozens of court cases through the certification process in each state and by the electoral college vote, the conclusion collectively has been reached that it would not. however, lax enforcement, denying effect, inc. bipartisan of the election process or conduct reasonable audits has led to heightened suspicion. the most difficult allegations to assess is the voting machines and software used. in order to determine the extent to which voting machines were subject to intrusion or other vulnerabilities, computer science experts must be given the opportunity to examine these allegations. this is a complex issue under congressional scrutiny for years. since 2018 i'm aware of three oversight letters requesting information from the main suppliers of voting machines. this oversight is focused on election systems and software llc, demean voting systems -- today we have a witness from the election assistance commission to describe what has been done and what more can be done to address on vulnerabilities. march 7, 2018 senators klobuchar and shaheen asked major vendors of u.s. voting equipment whether they had allowed russian entities to scrutinize software saying the practice could allow moscow to hack into american election infrastructure. then last year on march 26, senators klobuchar, warner, reid and peters wrote the integrity of our elections remain under serious threat. our nation's intelligence agencies continue to raise the alarm that foreign adversaries are trying to undermine our system of democracy and will target the 2020 elections as they did in 2016 and 2018 elections. a combination of older legacy machines and newer systems, vulnerabilities in each present a problem for the security of our democracy and they must be addressed. then on december 6, 2019, senators warren, klobuchar, widen and pickian wrote we're concerned that trouble-plagued companies owned by private equity firms and maintaining voting machines and other election equipment quote have long skimped on security in favor of convenience leading voting systems across the country prone to security problems. moreover, again a quote from that letter. when state and local officials work on replacing antiquated machines many continue to run an old software that will soon be outdated and more vulnerable to hackers. the letter continues, in 2018 alone voters in south carolina were reporting machines that switched their votes after they had inputted them. scanners were rejecting paper ballots in missouri and busted machines were causing long lines in indiana. in addition these senators write researchers recently uncovered previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in three dozen back end election systems in 10 states and this year after the democratic candidates electronic tally showed he received an improbable 146 votes out of 55,000 cast in a pennsylvania election in 2019 the chairman said nothing went right on election day. everything went wrong. that's a problem. these problems threat en the integrity of our election. now again those were three letters from democrat members of congress. now, maybe i missed it but i don't recall the media or anyone else accusing these eight congressional democrats of indulging in quackery and conspiracy theories, unquote or their letters of being quote, a ridiculous charade as senator schumer did when he used those same words attacking me and this hearing on the senate floor. the fact the last two presidential elections haven't been accepted as legitimate by large percentages of the american public is a serious problem that threatens our republic. this should be john going congressional oversight met to address that serious problem. so before i turn it over to senator peters i do want to remark this is my last hearing as chairman. i want to express the fact that i think it's been an honor and privilege to serve. i think our track record even though a couple last hearings some of these investigations have grown to be a little rank orous i regret that but we have a track record, 100 bills signed into law and passed by the committee maybe not signed into law but act as a foundation for future legislation. so again i want to thank everybody for working together, staff. it has been an honor and privilege. i want to acknowledge senator carper had a nice phone call. we'll probably be working in some capacity chairman and ranking member in the committee investigations and look forward to traig to find those areas of agreement of things we can look into together to give the american people the information they need to know as relates to government and other issues. thank you for calling it. i'll turn it over to senator peters. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thanks to our witnesses for being here today. mr. chairman, if we have learned anything over the past few years it is that we cannot take our democracy for granted. our institutions and our democratic norms have been under assault and when elected leaders fail to stand up to protect them, we just see how quickly things can he rode. for generations americans have been a shining example for budding democracies around the world. we've shown the world that strong governments and free societies can thrive when political power is entrusted to the people. we have demonstrated that the will of the people is above any one individual. and when voters choose their new leaders, power can be transferred peacefully. the president and many of his supporters are unfortunately continuing their efforts to undermine the will of the people, disenfranchise voters, and sew the seeds of mistrust and discontent to further their partisan desire for power. whether intended or not, this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies. it is a destructive exercise that has no place in the united states senate. joe biden won the election more than five weeks ago with 306 electoral votes and received the most popular votes for a presidential candidate in american history. all 50 states and the district of columbia have certified those results. the electoral college met monday and all affirm that joe biden will be the president on january 20th, 2021. it's a result that the majority of the american people recognize along with the leaders of more than 150 countries around the world. yet even after all of that, significant numbers of republican elected officials have been slow to publicly acknowledge that joe biden will be the next president of the united states. i appreciate that yesterday several of my republican colleagues made their first public comments acknowledging this fact. and i appreciate that even the chairman's rhetoric around this election has evolved over the last 24 hours. let me be clear, deciding to move forward with this hearing is still dangerous. elected leaders who are chosen by the voters to help uphold our institutions and democratic values spent weeks either turning a blind eye or parroting provocative rhetoric and false claims about this election. by not speaking out earlier, even though they knew it was wrong that there was no evidence to support these claims and that this inflammatory rhetoric is harmful to our democracy, many elected officials gave the president and his supporters license to spread damaging lies about the election. we have known for weeks that there was no widespread voter fraud. a fact that president trump's own department of justice has confirmed. there was no election interference and the election wasn't rigged. independent election security officials and the department of homeland security have called this election, quote, the most secure in american history, end of quote. we'll hear directly from the former director of sisa who will testify today about that fact. in the face of intimidation from the president and his supporters, including threats of violence and even death, election officials in states across the country certified their results as accurate. more than 50 -- 50 post election lawsuits filed by the trump campaign have been dismissed or withdrawn including by the united states supreme court because there is simply no evidence to support these claims in a court of law. and despite the title of today's hearing, there were no widespread election irregularities that affected the final outcome. these claims are false. and giving them more oxygen is a grave threat to the future of our democracy. now i understand the chairman's desire to insure our elections run smoothly and i agree that we need to restore faith and trust in our election process. but i'm concerned that today's hearing will do more harm than good by confusing anect dotes about human areas with the insidious claims by the president. mistakes do happen in elections. difference between a clerk making an error that gets caught and corrected during routine audits and calling the entire election fraudulent or stolen when there is no evidence just because you don't like the outcome. am mri filing these obviously false narratives about fraud or irregularities corrodes and threatens public trust and weakens our democracy and standing around the world. every time the president or his followers make these false claims, they destabilize our relationships with our allies and allow authoritarian adversaries to undercut american democratic leadership around the globe. democracy and a free society are not guaranteed. we have seen democracies around the world crumble because of similar words and actions. when executives abuse their power, when political leaders work to stifle the free press and when they delegitimize the principle of one person, one vote it puts our country on a dangerous path. i have faith that our democracy is strong and that it can withstand these attacks. but we need all of our leaders to speak up and condemn these harmful rhetoric. preserving our democracy takes hard work and i'm deeply troubled that we're at the edge of a crisis point. now is the time for american patriots who love this country to say enough is enough. now is the time for patriots to put our nation's founding ideals first during a time when american democracy needs the strongest defense that we can give. mr. chairman, today the trump campaign has filed 60 legal challenges to the election in eight states across this country. i ask that this document highlighting those cases and their failed attempts be entered into the record without objection. >> no objection. >> i would like to include in the record a non-exhaustive list of incidents of violence aimed at election officials as well as a statement from our nation's top law enforcement association's condemning the threats of violence, harassment, and intimidation leveled at election officials since election day. i also ask that op-eds from our nations foremost voices on election integrity, democratic steetion and national security including madeleine albright, michael chernoff and ben ginsburg be into the record. >> i'm not afraid of information. no object shun. >> i want to enter a statement from freedom house president. a nonprofit, nonpartisan. >> i don't see anything dangerous about evaluating information, about doing legitimate congressional oversight. nothing dangerous about that whatsoever. as i said in my last hearing closed mindedness is a real problem for a lot of the issues we face today. i should have entered in the record the reuters article from march 7, 2018 describing in the letter from senators klobuchar and shaheen, also into the record the march 27, 2019 press release and letter from senators klobuchar, warner, reid and peters. let me read a segment from that letter again. the integrity -- this is senator peters joining in writing this letter. the integrity of our elections remain under serious threat. our nation's intelligence agencies continue to raise the alarm that foreign adversaries are trying to undermine our system of democracy and will target the 2020 elections as they did in 2016 and 2018 elections. combination of legacy machines and newer systems, vulnerabilities in each present a problem for the security of our democracy and they must be addressed until i guess right now. let's move on and let's not worry about this because if we look at this it's dangerous to our democracy. okay. also the december 6, 2019 letters written by senators warren, klobuchar, widen and others to same equipment manufacturers. i would also like to enter the responses from dominion and hart to the march 27th letter but the ranking members' staff had objection. do you object to the responses? we'll enter those in the record. finally there is really interesting article recently written by a man who again i don't know his political affiliation. seems to be a pretty straight up reporter the things i read of him. no offense, i think you might be left of center. but the title is the youtube ban is unamerican, wrong, and will backfire, silicon valley couldn't have designed a better way to further radicalize trump voters. the reason i want to enter into article into the record i hope people read it. it speaks to an awful lot that i covered in my opening statement of why we're in this unsustainable state of affairs in this country where after 2016, four years of resistance failing to recognize -- refusing to recognize the legitimacy of that election and here we are again. this is not sustainable. but anyway, i want to welcome the witnesses. the tradition of this committee to swear in witnesses so those via webex if you raise your right hand and you in person please rise, raise your right hand. do you swear the testimony you give before this committee will be the truth, who truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? please be seated. our first witness is coming via webex, judge ken starr, he served on the court of appeals from 1983 to 1989. argued 36 cases before the supreme court and 25 cases during his service as solicitor general of the united states. from 1994 to 199 appointed to serve as independent counsel for five investigations. he had a distinguished career in academia and continues to write articles and serve as a commentator on media programs. >> thank you mr. starr and ranking members peters and members of the committee. it's an honor to be with you even remotely. over a century ago the supreme court of the united states wrote this. the right to vote is a fundamental political right preservative of all rights. and over our 231 years as a constitutional democracy, the story of our american experiment is in no small part a story of expansion and inclusion. and that policy has been undergirded by a desire to achieve human dignity and equality of all persons. in the wake of the civil war, very briefly our constitutional history in terms of amendments governing voting. the 15th amendment served as the capstone of the three post civil war amendments which taken together abolish slavery, guarantee due process and equal protection to all persons, and then expanding the right to participate to all persons. with the franchise expanding 100 years ago, the inclusion of women in 1920 as a federal constitutional right. the 19th amendment. elimination of financial impediments to vote. the 24th amendment in 1964. and finally, in the wake of the vietnam war, the expansion of the vote in federal elections to include 18-year-olds, the 26th amendment in 1971. of course, along the way congress acted to foster the values of the 15th amendment through the passage of the voting rights act of 1964 with its extensions over time. now underlying this story of ever-expanding voting rights was an assumption that is one of integrity in the process. recall the seeing the wonderful movie selma as a would be voter portrayed for oprah winfrey was stymied in her efforts to register to vote. dishonesty caused disenfranchisement and enormous moral outrage. the flip side of racially motivated disenfranchisement is the bedrock concept of treat everyone fairly and be honest in the process. this bears repeating. honesty in the electoral process is fundamental to the social bonds that unite us as a free people echoing the chairman's opening statement. not surprisingly the supreme court of the united states has severely warned about the dangers and corrosive effects of dishonesty. a unanimous supreme court wrote. confidence in the electoral processes is essential to the functioning of our democracy. the court went on to say voter fraud drives honest citizens out of the democratic process and breeds distrust of our form of government. how do we achieve honesty in elections? it's a challenge. decentralizations. we have national elections but we don't have a nationalized election with one set of rules. indeed both article 1 and article 2 point out the approach of our decentralized government and that is we look to the states, but specifically state leather. both article 1, section 4 of the constitution and article 2, section 1, clause 2. and so as in much of life, a guardrails of integrity are needed and time and again courts have warned in the strongest terms that assuring honesty and integrity is a compellingly important governmental interest just as sandra day o'connor, now retired who herself had been elected to state office in arizona specifically warned that judicial intervention may be required in order to protect the integrity of the election process. and so as we are looking into the presidential election of 2020 which is unprecedented feature of the use of mail-in ballots has given rise to a number of questions that deserve to be answered. instead of pointing to examples such as in pennsylvania where there was a clear violation of the law and then the statement of justice samuel alito since my time has now expired i want to close that in history there was a campaign, an illicit campaign to deprive abraham lincoln of the presidency and that was through the use of mail-in ballots. so i think in the spirit of the carter baker commission it is wise for us and the warning they had with respect to mail-in ballots to pause and reflect on how we can, in fact, better assure that bedrock factor and feature of integrity in the election process. i thank the chairman and i thank the committee. look forward to your questions. >> our next witness is commissioner palmer. the former secretary of the virginia state board of reelections and serve as the cheek election official from 2011 to 2014 and serves as intelligence officer, judge advocate general. commissioner palmer. >> good morning, chairman johnson and members of the committee and the ranking member. thank you for the opportunity to testify for the opportunity to testify. in the efforts of the election officials, commissioners and staff have a duty to insure the accuracy and integrity of the voting systems used throughout the nation. our mission is to support the chief election officials, in all localities across the kuhn tree. as the only federal agency committed to election administration we're charged with facilitating secure, lawful and accessible elections. under the help america vote act we've focused on assisting state and local election officials and a bipartisan agency that recognizes the authority of states to conduct federal elections and that's the cornerstone of our representative democracy. the 2020 general election is underscored the vital importance of comprehensive oversight of voting technology and the companies who manufacture these systems. that is an overlapping process, voluntary federal standard and state certification prior to each election. we work to bolster confidence in democracy by adopting voluntary voting system guidelines periodically. we test voting systems, we accredit laboratories and serve for election administration. let me be clear, we have confidence in the voting systems we certify. in the state and local election administrators who ran the election. that's the process the voting system manufacturers must undergo to receive federal certification. election management systems are used in elections and they go through software testing by laboratories accredited and the national institute of standards of technology. there are two accredited voting system laboratories. currently the quality monitoring program audits test laboratories and manufacturing facilities, conducting field reviews of certified voting systems and gathering information on voting system anomalies on voting systems. i strongly support additional field reviews and auditing and resolutions of any anomalies discover. to apply for certification of a voting system they need to apply to register with the agency as a registered manufacturer. it requires manufacturers to provide details on their names of officers and members of the boards of directors and any individual or organization with a controlling interest in the kuo. a list of all manufacturing or assembly facilities used by the manufacturer and the name and contact information of the person at each facility responsible for quality management must be provided. there are currently eight active manufacturers registered with the testing program. it is not a requirement to be a registered manufacturer. it's a voluntary program. joining the program they need to voluntarily agree. requirements complying with all investigations and inquiries into the uses and statuses of certified systems. under our quality monitoring program these investigations arise to technicals failures and misrepresentations made in regard to the certification of a voting system and any deviations in quality in regard to those systems. submitted to testing versus what is actually fielded. the staff on election day war room to gather information on issues reported by the media and election officials. five of the eight manufacturers participated in those calls. additionally the programming is following up with election officials and system manufacturers to obtain any information on claims of require reg lair tease report evidence in the media during the general election. that's ongoing. jurisdictions perform a series of logic tests. prior to operating those voting machines in polling places. we support those efforts. the technical assistance and best practices and grant monies. election officials conduct post election audits to verify the accuracy of the votes. we recognize the need to do more than ever to strengthen the confidence and integrity of our elections. all of us have an ambitious agenda to protect the foundation of our democracy. despite the challenges in recent years, we have fulfilled its obligation and expanded support it provides to election administrators and voters. we look forward to working with congress in a bipartisan manner as we continue our efforts to help america vote. i'm happy to answer any questions following this testimony. thank you. >> thank you. our next witness is here in person. the lead attorney for the trump campaign in wisconsin. from 2015 to 2016 he was a circuit court judge if dane county, wisconsin. currently a partner-in-law office. partner is a law office. >> i'm honored to be here and thank you for the invitation. i submitted written testimony i ask to be in the record and provide additional remarks at this point. >> trace: without objection everybody's testimony is entered into the record. >> thank you. absentee voting in wisconsin is treated quite differently i believe than other parts of the country. let me read what the legislature found. it is in our statutes. it says the legislature finds that the privilege of voting by absentee ballot must be carefulry regulated to prevent fraud and abuse, prevent overzealous solicitation of absent elect tors who might not want to participate and undue influence. as a consequence are laws are strictly con trued and let me read again, results that don't comply with those regulations, quote, may not be included in the certified results of any election. so it is very straight forward that the state of wisconsin has taken a very different view of in-person voting with all the protections and absentee voting that has been repeatedly including in the carter commission report thought to be a source of significant potential for fraud. in wisconsin we just completed a recount. more than 2500 vol untears, probably more than 1,000 volunteers for the biden campaign as well. uniquely we're able to examine nflts that contain the ballots submitted by absentee voters. it allowed us to identify by person, by address, by ward, not conspiracy, the real names are in the record and here is what we found. we found that there were incomplete and altered certificates on the front of the envelopes that have to be exactly done correctly under our law. if not, those results may not be counted. how many of those? more than 3,000 of those identified by person were nonetheless counted even though they are clearly invalid under the law. a second category, initials of clerks are placed on all of those envelopes. why? because the clerk identifies having been properly received and identification is provided. that is the check in advance of the election. what did we find? more than 2,000 of those ballots in dane and milwaukee county had no initials at all. but nonetheless they got counted. we also have special laws in wisconsin with regard to voting in advance. we do not allow advance voting. we allow in-person and other voting as absentee. anything before election day is under our absentee rules. what did the city of madison do? they created a system where people could arrive at a park, hand in their ballots in envelopes, five weeks before the election. they also created boxes, no controls at all, just boxes on corners that you could throw the ballot in. no attempt at all. our statutes explicitly say there are only two ways to submit an absentee ballot. in person or delivery to the clerk's office. nothing else is aloud. yet the city of madison we had 28,395 -- 17,271 ballots in this category that we identified. there are tens of thousands more because they co-mingled the ballots afterwards so we couldn't identify each one that may have been improperly cast. then we have an interesting category called indefinitely confined. people which the statute by age, physical illness or infirmity or disabled indefinitely. among those claiming this status so they don't have to provide any identification. among those claiming this status is one of the electors for joe biden. he said i can't get to the polls. we have poll workers who claimed it. we have people who went to protest, people who had weddings and vacations all claimed this status, i can't get to the polls so they were able to vote without identification. there were 28,395 people we explicitly identified. finally, there are other categories in which as much as 170,000 other ballots were submitted without any application. in fact, they considered the certification envelope the application. though a separate application is required by law. 3 million people properly voted in the state of wisconsin. more than 200,000 identified during this recount did not. but those votes got counted. our statute says they should not have been. that in our view is a taint on our election in wisconsin. thank you. >> trace: thank you. i believe joe biden won our state by 20,000 votes and you are talking over 200,000 that were outside of our law that probably if the law would have been followed probably shouldn't have been counted. shouldn't have been accepted or put in the ballot pool and of course the remedy is not particularly pleasing, which is one of the reasons that the decision went its way. i'll come back to you. representative francis ryan. served in the pennsylvania house of representatives. a certified public account. mr. ryan is a retired marine reserve colonel who served in the central command special operations officer in operation enduring freedom. representative ryan. >> thank you so much for the chance to be with you today. the mail-in ballot system for the general election in 2020 in pennsylvania was so fraught with inconsistencies and irregularities that the reliability of the mail-in votes in the commonwealth of pennsylvania is almost impossible to rely upon. the evidence of these violations of the pennsylvania election laws, election security safeguards and the process flaws include things such as actions by the pennsylvania supreme court which undermined the controls inherent in act 77 of 2019. the controls that were undermined included on september 17th, 2020, the supreme court unilaterally expanded the deadline for mail-in ballots to be received to three days after the election. they mandated that the ballots mailed without a post mark would be presumed to be received and allowed the use of drop boxes for collection of votes. on october 23, 2020, upon a petition from the secretary of the commonwealth moved that mail-in ballots need not authenticate signature treating in-person and mail-in voters dissimilar lay and eliminating a critical safeguard against potential election fraud. this is one of my main reasons for believing that it is difficult to believe that the voting process can be relied upon. also actions and inactions by the secretary of state which undermined the consistency and controls of the election process. on november 2, the night before the november 3 election and prior to the prescribed time for pre-canvassing mail-in ballots the office of the secretary of the commonwealth encouraged certain parties from mail-in voters who ballots contained defects. certain counties watchers were not allowed to meaningfully observe the pre-canvassing and canvassing activities correlated to the absentee and mail-in ballot process. these are what i would call the strategic. the operational level there were a significant number of issues that resulted from those issues. the pennsylvania election system is the shore system. some things that took place called into question the consistency. in the case of an overvote, on november 4, 11:30 they posted updated mail-in votes showing despite the fact that only 432,873 ballots were issued to voters. this data was later corrected but the question becomes who had the authorization to change and correct that information and who had access to this system. any type of system control would ask for that. additionally on the data file on november 4, 2020 the open data records site reported 3.1 million ballots sent out. in a prior discussion had the day before the election it was indicated there are 2.7 million that were sent out. and efforts to attempt to reconcile those numbers haven't been successful and still need to be resolved upon. recently, a newly available data -- [inaudible] indicated the last update had been done on november 16, 2020. the download of november 16, 2020 shows 75,505 more ballots returned on 11-16 than the comparable download on november 15th. so that basically means an additional 75,505 ballots were added to the dataset without any explanation or the ability to have a hearing. it becomes almost impossible to track in the system of controls. additionally there were irregularities in the 3.1 million ballots relative to the dates the ballots were finalized. ballots mailed late and ballots mailed inconsistent with active legislation was 154,584 ballots. the vote date of birth irregularities, voters over 100 years of age. 1,573 ballots. these discrepancies can only be validated by determining the access and authority for the entry, verification of the data entry as well as authentication. every time you have this type of system of controls as a cpa you would want to insure the system is designed to prevent wrongdoing. the efforts by the state government committee and other members of the pennsylvania legislature to obtain oversight information and relative data to confirm or deny were stymied. even an effort to have a hearing on november 20, 2020 with dominion system was canceled after dominion systems indicated they were concerned. without knowing the answers to these questions i get to the magnitude of the discrepancies in the election, the results of the 2020 presidential election in pennsylvania would just be completely difficult, if not impossible to determine with conclusiveness. mr. chairman and ranking member. thank you for your time and i look forward to your questions. >> trace: thank you, representative ryan. our next witness is mr. jesse benal? he is an attorney for the trump campaign and lead counsel for the campaign in nevada. a partner of a law firm. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ranking member peters. thank you, mr. chairman, ranking member peters and recommend members of the committee. this year thousands upon those of nevada voters had their voices canceled out by election fraud and invalid fraud. on august 3, 2020 after a rushed special session nevada legislators made drastic changes to the state's election law by adopting a bill known as ab4. the vulnerabilities of this statute were obvious. it provided for universal mail voting without sufficient safeguards to authenticate voters or insure the requirement that only one ballot was sent to each legally qualified voter. this was aggravated by election officials failure to clean known deficiencies in voter rolls. because of ab4 the number of mail ballots rocketed from 70,000 in 2016 to over 690,000 this year. the election was riddled with fraud and our hotline never stopped ringing. while the media and democrats accused us of making it all up our team began chasing down every lead. our evidence came both from data scientists and from brave whistleblowers. here is what we found. over 42,000 people voted more than once. our experts were able to make this determination by reviewing the list of actual voters and comparing it to other voters with the same name, address, and date of birth. this method was also able to catch people using different variations of their first name such as william and bill. individuals who registered both under a married name and the maiden name. at least 1500 dead people are recorded as voting as shown by comparing the list of mail voters with the social security death records. more than 19,000 people voted even though they didn't live in nevada. this does not include military voters or students. these voters were identified by comparing the list of voters with a u.s. postal services national change of address database among other sources. about 8,000 people voted from non-existent addresses. we cross referenced voters with the coding accuracy support system which allowed our experts to identify undeliverable addresses. over 15,000 votes were cast from commercial or vacant addresses. our experts found these voters by analyzing official u.s. postal service records that flag non-residentialall address and addresses vacant for more than 90 days. almost 4,000 non-citizens also voted as determined by comparing official dmv records of non-citizens to the list of actual voters in the 2020 election. the list goes on. all in all, our experts identified 130,000 unique instances of voter fraud in nevada. but the actual number is almost certainly higher. our data scientists made these by analyzing and compare the list of actual voters with other lists, most of which are publicly available. to put it simply, they explain their methods so others could check their work. our evidence has never been refuted, only ignored. two clark county technical employees came forward completely independent of each other and explained they discovered the number of votes recorded by voting machines and stored on usb drives would change between the time the polls were closed at night and reopened the next morning. in other words, votes were literally appearing and disappearing in the dead of night. when we attempted to verify the integrity of these voting machines we were allowed only a useless visual inspection of the outside of a usb drive. we were denied a forensic examination. finally our investigation covered a campaign to illegally incentivize votes from marginalized -- our determined team verified these irregularities without tools of law enforcements. instead we had less than a month, used critical thinking and elbow grease to compile our evidence. tried to obtain testimony or documents from clark county official efs but they stonewalled. when we filed suit state officials and courts delayed proceedings to days and offered us merely hours to brief and argue our cases. wrapping up, mr. chairman. these findings are disturbing, alarming, unacceptable in a free society. our free and fair election is a precious treasure. it is hard to win and easy to lose. every single time a fraudulent or illegal vote is cast the vote of an honest citizen is canceled out. thank you. >> our final witness is here in person. mr. christopher krebs testified before this committee. he served as the first director of the department of homeland security, cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. he also served in various roles with the department with a range of cybersecurity and national resilience issues. prior to coming to dhs he was from microsoft. he also served in the bush administration advising dhs leadership on domestic risk management and public private partnership initiatives. welcome back, mr. krebs. >> chairman johnson and ranking members peters and members of the committee. i previously served as the director of sics. a job of a lifetime for me and opportunity for the nation. when i sat before this commission in 2018 for my confirmation hearing i can't imagine how challenging and rewarding this job would be. it is an honor to testify about the election security community to protect the 2020 election. a difficult task complicated by the ongoing global pandemic. but before i get into the substance of my remarks i'm grateful to this committee and your leadership and guidance over the last several years. first in shepherding what is probably the best of the 100 bills that came through the committee your efforts for the sisa authorizing statute. and your support of the efforts to secure our elections. nation should thank the many federal, state and local election part force for the crucial work that has been done to give our citizens the confidence that their vote was counted as cast. we should also be taking a victory lap celebrating a job well done. considering where we started. when i rejoined the department of homeland security in 2017 america had en toured a broad attack on democracy the interference campaign by the russian federation. whatever their other motivations this campaign sought to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions. building on the universal agreement across the national security community that we could not allow that to happen again we started to what needed to be improved based on the 2016 elections. we needed to improve our relationships with state and local election officials, the individuals that run our elections. second, we needed to improve the security and resilience of election systems particularly by phasing out voting machines without paper ballots. third, federal agencies needed to move faster, work better together, with each other and our state and local counterparts and be more pro-active in order to detect and prevent attacks on our democracy. over the course of the last few years we met these challenges. we improved the relationships with key partners through constant engagement in building election security community of practice. this improvement is perhaps best represented by an election-specific information sharing and analysis center made up of all 50 states and thousands of jurisdictions and improved the security of systems scanning for vulnerabilities in election system. providing intelligence briefings and deploying security sensors, among other measures. while we also principally focused on stopping actual hacks we had to contend with perception hacks. a form of disinformation which we countered with our rumor control website and contributed to the cross agency effort to protect the 2020 election by surging coordination and collaboration with our partners across the national security space. in conclusion because of these and other efforts on november 12, 2020 government and industry representatives from the election security community issued a joint statement reflecting a consensus perspective that the 2020 election was the most secure in u.s. history. that statement reflects the confidence these officials gained based on years of work poured into improving the security and resilience of our elections. it was based on the strong operational relationships developed across the election security community 57bd based on the partnership between our agency under this committee, the f.b.i., election assistance commission, department of defense and intelligence community. it was based on an intimate understanding of how our elections work in the u.s. and based on the increase in paper ballots and audits across the nation and most importantly, it was based on the professionals, the heroes, that conduct elections in this country. while elections are sometimes messy, this was a secure election. of that i have no doubt. chairman johnson, ranking member peters and members of this committee thank you for opportunity to be here today for your leadership and support of cisa. i look forward to your questions and sharing our efforts to protect the election of 2020. >> i think under the obama administration and the trump administration while i've been chairman i think dhs, now the form of cisa has done a very good job from 82 to 95% paper ballots. that's improving our election integrity. i appreciate your efforts to do that. mr. troupis, the decision by the wisconsin supreme court went against you. maybe not totally against you. i did read the rather scathing dissent from the chief judge. can you describe exactly what in summary fashion what the wisconsin supreme court's decision was based on your lawsuit talking about all the areas that you have concern with? >> certainly. the wisconsin supreme court was urged by the biden campaign not to address any substantive issues and that is exactly what happened. the biden campaign argued to the court that we're not going to talk about any of the substantive things or dispute the things i just brought up to you, but instead you just shouldn't hear them because a state agency, the wisconsin election commission, had authorized some of these activities. and candidly as chief justice and other dissenters held, one, the claims are substantive, they are substantial, and they needed to be addressed. second, the wisconsin election commission is a bureaucratic organization explicitly that the same court just four months ago said has no meaning. it is not law. it is some advice given and that the statute says control. we were disappointed not so much in the decision, but in the fact that the decision itself is premised not on an analysis of the law or claims. an idea that we shouldn't have a transparent system and that you won't address these things. that's what they argued. it is disappointing in wisconsin. we have a long history in wisconsin, unlike other states, i know unlike other states, of high transparency. our recounts were conducted with utmost integrity by both milwaukee and dane county with thousands of volunteers able to look at those items and it's really a sad day, thankfully the opposition doesn't argue we're wrong. it argues we shouldn't be heard. that's a strange thing in a state that is so transparent as ours. >> just real quick i know former director krebs talked about the men and women who run the elections. i had a half hour conversation with my county clerk. i will tell you if every county clerk ran their elections like our county does, we would have a completely secure election. i think that's true of the vast majority of elections in different precincts. mr. benal, mr. troupis talking about the law he was arguing before the wisconsin supreme court was ignored. you had a similar statement. it wasn't information you presented the committee, it was never rebutted. it was simply ignored. can you talk about that? >> yes, mr. chairman. it was extremely disappointing that rather than address our issues and the data we presented head-on they tried to use technicalities and limiting our evidence. limiting the amount of witnesses we could bring forward saying that we couldn't introduce any live testimony but only 15 depositions to show 130,000 instances of voter fraud and then when it went -- they gave us two hours to brief tissues before immediately coming down with a decision. the record was over 8,000 pages long. we were never fully -- [inaudible]. we never too a good look at hard evidence. >> mr. krebs, you testified here on this issue the potential for foreign is interference to have impact on elections. we've had private conversations. i've always categorized the ability foreigners to interfere with the election three buckets. one is changing the vote tallies on the machines. secondly is packing into voter registration files which causal kinds of problems but quite honestly detected on election day when there is chaos. third, what i think is the more serious problem. the one more difficult to detect is basically the use of social media. you quoted which i can't remember cisa group that declared it the most secure election in our history? >> joint government coordinating counsel statement. >> one of the reasons i've always stated based on our discussions of your testimony that my knowledge it's almost impossible to change the vote tally by hacking these computers based on the fact these things are not connected most of them don't have the capability of being connected to the internet. based on all these allegations people are talking to it sounds like some of these machines are showing the tabulateors can and are connected to the internet. can you explain to me the whole voting machine tabulation, internet connections is just a huge confusing mess. can you speak to that? >> i think it's important to step back and actually look at how votes are cast in the country particularly with paper ballots. regardless of any internet connections or foreign hacking. as long as you have the paper receipt. >> let me stop you there. i acknowledge that, yes, the paper backup is the control if it's used. that would be my next question. set aside the control of the machine process, it is capable. i want to know on what basis and aspects of this is the most secure because when you listen to the other witnesses there was fraud in this election. i don't have any doubt about that. there was fraud. we don't know the extent or what the remedy would be when identified, okay? again, just speak to the computer aspect of this. the connection to the internet, the possibility if these machines are connected to the internet, or if in the certification process, because i think mr. palmer in our discussions you were talking a little bit about people attempted to change the controls or the program in these computers inside that certification process. but mr. krebs, just talk to the computer aspect of this. it's the most difficult and confusing aspect of these allegations. >> there are a number of different systems and machines and computers involved in the entirety of the election process from registration through ballot design through ballot printing to actual voting into the tabulation and post election process. throughout you are going to -- particularly where a vote is cast on election day, those machines the end and should not be connected to the internet is the best practice. >> some may have the capability, don't they? >> modems that are typically disabled. in wisconsin some are temporary activated to transmit some counts. when you have paper and you conduct a post election audit. >> if they are connected >> >> technology in elections are used to facilitate access and increase accuracy of the process but election officials are very careful that technology is not a single point of failure and that there are security controls before, during, and after the vote process. >> finish this computer thing. we'll come back to the how many audits, sampling, that type of thing to use the paper back-ups. finish this answer. >> as you move out from election day there will be tabulateors that may have internet connections to transmit the vote from the precinct to the county level and state. security controls in place. as long as you have the paper, can't hack paper, you can run that process. >> those tabulateors are connected on election day to transmit to data to the counties and also into the unofficial -- >> in some cases yes, sir, that's right. >> i'll follow up. senator peters. >> thank you, mr. chairman. questions for mr. krebs. before i get to that i want to be clear we've heard a number of statements made by other witnesses. we've heard those statements before. we're continuing to hear those statements. i would just say anybody watching this hearing look at the 60 court cases that have been brought before the judiciary in this country and how the arguments i should say the statements, not arguments, they're statements that have been made have all been rejected by courts of law including in wisconsin, which was a republican judge that rejected the arguments made by this administration. cisa has the primary responsibility for working with state and local election officials and the private sector to secure our election infrastructure. it is important for folks to realize where you sat and what your responsibilities. in essence were tasked with coordinating with those of partners across the country to insure the integrity of the 2020 election. that was your job. by all accounts you were very successful at that. president trump's own department of justice concluded and i will quote the department of justice in the the trump administration. we haven't seen fraud on a scale that could have affected the outcome. the coordinating council executive committee comprising of federal, state and local government officials and numerous private sector organizations from all around the country jointly called this, quote, the most secure in american history. end of quote. you also echo this statement and when you echo that statement you are fired by president trump. he didn't want to hear that clearly. so my question to you, do you stand by that statement? have you seen anything in the weeks since november 4 that would lead you to change your mind and have you identified any credible claim of widespread election irregularities? >> i stand by the claim. i said it in my opening statement and in my written statement and yet to see anything from a security perspective. security perspective that would change my opinion on that. fraud is a different matter. it is a criminal matter. but again bolstered by the attorney general's statement from last week or recently again nothing to change my opinion of that matter. >> so after more than five weeks that the president lost and numerous public officials continued to pressure state and local elected officials to push what are false narrative that election irregularities should make him a withinner this race you have willingly -- these folks are willingly fanning the flames of discontent and in the process of weakening institutions central to our democracy. my question is what is the danger in your estimation to the democratic process to challenge the legitimacy of an election and deny its results in the absence of any credible evidence? >> generally from a timing perspective with the seating. electoral colleges and 306 electoral votes we're past the point we need to have conversations about the outcome of this election. continued assaults on democracy and the outcome of this election that only serves to undermine confidence in the process is ultimately, as you both have said, ultimately corrosive to the institutions that support elections and going forward it will be that much harder. the trick about elections is that, you know, you aren't so much trying to convince the winner they won, the loser that they lost and you need willing participants on both sides. we have to get back to that point. otherwise we'll have a very difficult time going forward maintaining confidence in this american experiment. >> during the 2016 election, we saw foreign disinformation campaigns trying to sew doubt about the integrity of our election. we've seen that before and very clearly in 2016 and certainly all the intelligence community in this country back that up. and so in fact cisa rumor control page was created within your agentz. you mentioned it in your testimony. to address foreign disinformation, having an impact on the election. yet rather than creating fake news, it seems as if russia has simply used state-controlled news outlets to basically push president trump's own statements and lies about a rigged election. our adversaries don't have to be technologically advanced or have to be creative to sew that doubt. all they have to do is air the words of american elected officials on their state-owned news networks. as clint watt said, a former f.b.i. agent and disinformation expert put it which is very strong. he said, quote, nothing that russia or iran or china could say is anywhere near as wild as what the president is saying. end of quote. so my question is how are our foreign adversaries taking advantage of false claims of broad election fraud by the president and his supporters or hearings like we're hearing here. we hear these statements again that are broadly claiming systemic irregularities where none exist. how damaging is that? >> talking about rumor control it was an innovation in government that we created on the fly to address some emerging threats. the point, though, that i would like to highlight with rumor control is that it was intended to identify and debunk issues as they were emerging. we saw domestic disinformation campaigns of a cybersecurity nature that were emerging in the days and weeks following the election. i'll talk about the hammer and scorecard claims. there was a c.i.a. super computer and program that were flipping votes throughout the country. in georgia specifically. but again, chairman johnson i will keep coming back to it. that's why it is so important to have a paper trail. that's why it is so important to have paper ballots. even if there was foreign interference of a malicious algorithm nature you can always go back to the receipts. you can check your math. georgia did that three times and the outcomes were consistent over and over and over again. >> which is why i brought that up. it should provide comfort with the paper backup. i have to talk about russian disinformation. the people peddling it are not on my side of the aisle. senior democrat leaders including peters were involved in creating a false intelligence product that they leaked to the media that accused senator grassley, the president pro-tem of the senate and myself of accepting and disseminating russian disinformation from a person. i never heard of him until they brought it up. senator peters introduced that false russian disinformation into our investigation record. 50 people associated with the intelligence community after our hunter biden investigation and the revelations of the hunter biden computer said oh, this is russian disinformation. now we find out it's a real investigation by the justice department. so it is galling and i just have to point out that the per veh ors of russian dispower, the steele dossier, ranking member peters accusing senator grassley and i of disseminating did russia disinformation. that's where the false information and the lies and the false allegations. i can't sit by here and listen to this and say that this is not disinformation, this hearing today. this is getting information. we have to take a look at to restore confidence in our election integrity. we won't be able to just move on without bringing up these irregularities and provide the explanation and see if there really are problems to see -- >> you say i'm putting out information. i had nothing to do with this report >> you lied repeatedly. you lied repeatedly in the press. that i was spreading russian disinformation. i told you to stop lying and you continued to do it. >> mr. chairman, this is not about airing your grievances. >> you talked about russian disinformation. >> mr. chairman you can't make those allegations and drop it there. that is why this -- >> senator paul. >> senator paul. >> this is terrible what you are doing to this committee and all the great work. >> it is what you have done to this committee. false lie accusing the chairman of spreading disinformation. you are spoungt it again which is why i had to respond. senator paul. >> judge starr, it has been alleged 60 courts have refuelsed to hear these cases therefore there was no fraud in the election. i guess another way of looking at this is the court cases have been refused for procedural and technical reasons. when you see the 60 court cases rejected do you think it's a conclusion by our court system that there is no fraud or do you think that the court cases were primarily rejected for procedural reasons? >> senator paul, it is my understanding that the vast majority of these cases were rejected for rightly stated procedural reasons as opposed to a merits based evaluations. we saw that very recently and most dramatically by the supreme court's unanimous rejection of the bill of complaint filed by the texas attorney general, my home state here. and the entirety of the decision was based upon the legal concept of standing. you just don't, texas, have standing to object to what happened in wisconsin or pennsylvania and whatever. that's a reasonable ruling. those who would quarrel with it in that we are a united states of america and if something bad happens in one state that ends up having an effect on another state, we have such respect for our states as sovereign entities within our union that the argument is, i think, quite reasonable and i think others think it is quite reasonable at least the matter should have been heard under the original jurisdiction. i think that's a key example. >> trace: i think it's important that we look at this and understand what courts are saying and not saying. the courts have not said there wasn't fraud. they didn't rule on or hear from the fraud. i do think there is an important issue here, though, the fraud is one aspect of this. and i think courts have historically been receipt sent to get involved in elect an and looking at fraud. we have to re-evaluate our state rules in order this doesn't happen again. we can't sit by and say we'll let it happen again. there is another important aspect to this, though, that is a legal aspect that i think does need to be heard by the courts. i don't know if it can be heard beyond the election but i think should. this is the question of whether or not people who are non-legislators can change the election law. this happened in many, many states. two dozen states decided to accept ballots after the election, two dozen states decided they could mail out applications or mail out ballots, all without the will of the legislature. do you think there is any hope for any of this being heard, judge starr, outside of the concept of changing the election? any possibility any court will hear this and say it's wrong that secretary of states changed the law in the middle of pandemic without the approval of the legislature or do you think there is no hope because it's mixed up in electoral politics? >> i think there is a possibility. this issue may return in light of the use, this unprecedented use of mail-in ballots. and the concern that is a bipartisan concern, again the carter/baker commission that we need to look at these issues. and so i think there is a doctrine, senator paul, to essentially say this issue may recur again so it should not be washed out as being mute because there is a very important principle here as i made in my open statement and written statement. the constitution is very clear that it is the prerogative of state legislatures of what these rules and laws are. that was flagrantly violated in pennsylvania. and perhaps elsewhere as well. >> i think the legal question there is a very easy one to decide. i think even as a physician i can figure out the secretary of state cannot create law. i do think, though, that many of us who wanted this to be heard by the supreme court and are disappointed actually also might be disappointed by the precedent of bush versus gore in the sense i think bush verses gore's precedent is shutting down elections that have been certified. they weren't going to continue to count the hanging chads. the secretary of state certified it. so i actually think the bush versus gore precedent actually argues against the supreme court overturning certified elections. do you have an opinion on that? >> i don't have an opinion on that specifically. bush versus gore stands for the base being proposition you cannot have changes in election laws after the fact. you must, in fact, be faithful to what the state legislature has done. that's also what justice alito said in his opinion. i think essentially condemning but certainly identifying as a huge issue what had happened in pennsylvania. so i think all in all bush versus gore is a reiteration of our constitutional structure. >> thank you. mr. chairman as we go on with this i think it is important that we not stop here. a lot of the laws that have to be confirmed and i think reaffirmed are state laws so it is not in our purview but the state laws are set and we have federal elections. what happened in wisconsin and nevada is true and have to prevent it from happening again. state legislatures will need to reaffirm that election law can only be changed by a state legislature. there is a lot of work to be done. while we won't dictate it to the states i think we should have hearings going into the next year hearing from state legislatures and what they'll do to make sure election law is upheld, not changed by people who are not legislators and that we do have an interest in that. i don't want it to be federalized. many on the other side of the aisle will do it and mail everybody a ballot and have universal corruption throughout the land. we need to leave it at the state level and we can't say it didn't happen. we're just going to sweep it under the rug. the courts haven't decided the facts. they never looked at the facts. they don't like elections and they stayed out of it by finding an excuse to stay out of it. the fraud happened. the election in many ways was stolen and the only way it will be fixed is by in the future reinforcing the laws. the only last comment i would say on what mr. krebs and he can speak for himself. his job was keeping the foreigners out of the election and most secure election based on internet and technology. he never has voiced an opinion. welcome to today, whether or not dead people voted. i don't think he examine that. did he examine non-citizens voting? to say it was a safe election i agree with you are statement if you refer to foreign intervention. if you are saying it's the safest election based on no dead people voted, no non-citizens voted or broke the absent tee rules that's false and what's upset a lot of people on our side. they're taking your statement to men there was no problem in the election. i don't think you examined any of the problems we've heard here. really you are just referring to something differently is the way i look at it. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thanks, mr. chairman. to our witnesses, those that are here and those afar we welcome you. i want to say to chris krebs on behalf of many of us on both sides of the aisle thank you for a job well done and courage to speak truth to power. mr. chairman, colleagues, president lincoln once said given the truth people can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. the great point is to bring them the real facts. those are his words. that's what we in the navy call the straight skinny. the straight skinny. and with all due respect the american people have had the facts with respect to the outcome of this election for some time now. the truth, the straight skinny if you will is staring us in the face. it may not be what president trump and supporters wanted, but joe biden and kamala harris received more votes than any ticket in american history. that's something we ought to be celebrating. success made possible in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic thanks to ordinary citizens who volunteered as poll workers across the country. many of them risked their own health to oversee the count and postal workers worked to deliver absentee ballots. u.s. cybersecurity infrastructure agency led by chris krebs has called the election the most secure in american history and called it that today. throughout this country courts have flat out rejected claims of elected irregularities. conservative trump appointed judges in state after state have dismissed the trump campaign's claims calling them baseless and worse. let me cite a couple of examples. in response to the legal challenge from the trump campaign in pennsylvania, federal judge appointed by president trump and a long time member of the conservative federalist society wrote that quote charges of unfairness are serious. calling an election unfair does not make it so. charges require specific allegations and then proof. he went on to say we have neither here. neither here. one of the most strongly worded opinions came from a wisconsin state justice who served as president chapter of the federal society and chief legal counsel scott walker said. something far more fundamental than the winner of wisconsin's electoral votes is imme indicated in this case. he wrote that in declining to hear a case asking the court to overturn the election results. went on to say this. at stake is faith in our system of free and fair elections. a feature central to the enduring strength of our constitutional republic. we should all just say amen to that. we learned this week that the arguments from the trump legal team thus far have been defeated 59 times out of 61 in state and federal courts. 59 times including 9-0 by the supreme court, u.s. supreme court just last week. i'm wearing my mask here from my alma mater, where i was a navy midshipman. if the foot ball coach at ohio state were to go 2-59 over a period of four years, he would be fired. he would be fired. and in fact that's what the voters of this country have done with our president. like it or not. those 61 cases, at least 59 of them were not close calls. in suit after suit across red and blue states in opinions written by judges the trump's campaign's largely contrived allegations have been rejected. four years after donald trump lost the popular vote by 3 million votes biden and harris won it by 7 million votes and received 306 votes in the electoral college earlier this week. a margin described by candidate trump four years ago as a landslide. but what if the outcome is not as definitive four years from now? or eight years from now? what if? and with different judges on the bench, different candidates and a lot less integrity and courage from state and local officials a defeated party might somehow be able to steal an election as alleged here falsely. think about that. somehow might be able to steal an election. friends, that ought to scare the hell out of all of us. meanwhile many of the president's supporters continue to spread misinformation and false allegations about the presidential election. the truth of the matter is in a lot of states many of the voters who voted for joe biden for president turned around on their ballots and they voted on down ballot races to our chagrin they voted for republicans in congressional and state legislative races and more. what we call that in delaware, we call it ticket splitting. it's as old os our democracy. it is not a conspiracy. it is plain and simple ticket splitting. we've done it before and we'll do it again. let me go on to say what we say in this committee and in this body matters. if we continue to push what the courts have overwhelmingly called baseless claims of fraud we not only risk permanent damage to our democracy, we also become complicit in threats and attacks against election officials and ordinary citizens. in georgia nonpartisan election technicians have faced death threats for doing their jobs. georgia secretary of state -- and his family have received death threats. mr. krebs our witness here today, trump pointy has been bombarded with threats ever since an attorney said on national tv. krebs should be taken out at dawn and shot. just this week credible threats of violence closed the michigan state capitol and electors in pennsylvania needed law enforcements courts when they went to cast their votes. this is not the america that our founding fathers dreamed of. this is shameful. enough already. we have work to do to get america back on track. start right here in this congress, in this house. all of us, democrats and republicans here in this body need to do our jobs and that's just the beginning. there are over 250 million americans who need to be vaccinated. millions of businesses that need a helping hand. tens of millions of students who need to be back in school getting an education, hundreds of thousands of hospital and nurse pg workers who need a break. but it will be hard to move forward as a country or as a congress until we accept the clear results of this election and turn the page. in 1787 colleagues delegates from 13 colonies convened in philadelphia to debate the future of our country. they disagreed on a lot of things but they all agreed on this. they didn't want a king. and responding to arguments for the trump legal team in wisconsin a member of the state supreme court there echoed these sentiments when she said to them, quote, you want us to overturn this election so your king can stay in power? that's unamerican, close quote. you know what? she was right. it is unamerican. mr. chairman and colleagues, when chairman johnson became the leader of this committee in 2015 he pledged to run this committee and i quote with a spirit of bipartisan teamwork, respect, integrity and professionalism. that's been the hallmark of this committee for years. for decades. and those words were reassuring to me and our colleagues and our staffs and a few years later when we worked together to introduce a bipartisan presidential transition improvement act he said the peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next is the hallmark of our democracy. those are words we hope and expect to hear from our leaders. words that appeal to our better angels. words that unite us, not divide us. and sadly i fear that today's hearing may not be truly reflective of those words. i hope i'm wrong. but if i'm not, today's hearing could prove deeply disappointing to me and to 330 million people that we serve across this nation. let's not disappoint them. as we continue with this hearing today i would just say to our chairman, if you ask our witness to stand and take an oath to tell the truth. it is only fair for all of us to hold ourselves to the same standard. if our nation's leaders don't embrace the truth in daily discourse we don't have a democracy that can endure. calling an election unfair doesn't make it so and spreading disinformation in this committee or any committee doesn't stay inside these four walls. i began my statement today with the words of abraham lincoln. i want to conclude it with a words of thomas jefferson. here is what he said. if the people know the truth, they won't make a mistake. if the people know the truth, they won't make a mistake. so let's tell them the truth. let's tell them the truth today, tomorrow, and for generations to come. the truth will keep us free. the truth will keep us free. it always has, and it always will. thank you. >> chairman went down to vote quickly and we are in the middle of a vote series. we'll maintain the hearing and continue to move through this hearing process though there are two votes. you will see us switching back an forth while he is running to vote. i will sit in for a moment for the chairman and recognize myself for the next round of questions. i happen to be next in line. i'm not pulling time here but i want to be able to recognize myself and do that. when he returns we will switch. december 2016 there was a poll that was done on if the american people believed the russians interfered and changed our election. at that time 32% of the people believed that the russians had influenced the outcome of the election in december of 2016. based on that belief and what was going on there was launched a whole series of hearings. the russians were trying to interfere in our elections but we spent millions of dollars investigating it, going through it. ramping up entities like cisa and others to protect our next election. senator klobuchar and i worked for years on election security legislation and worked to get it implemented and did six different public hearings on russian interference just on that one topic to make sure we were paying attention to it when it started with 32% of americans in december of 2016 believing the russians had interfered in our election. a few days ago, another poll asked the question do you believe there was election and voter fraud in a presidential election between joe biden and donald trump? this december 46% of the voters in america have said yes. 45% saying no. interestingly enough trump voters say there was fraud 80%, biden voters also said 16% that they believed there was voter fraud. the reason i bring that up is we watched what happened in 2016 and what the american people thought and saw and so we engaged with hearings, we looked at the issues and determined do things need to change? much of the work that's gone on the last several years to get paper ballots into states happened because this congress engaged on an issue where we saw an obvious problem. so we distributed federal dollars, assistance, and a constant drumbeat to say these states have to fix the areas where they don't have paper ballots and we have the potential for problems. that was the question. is there a potential for a problem. the answer was yes, there is a potential and we ought to fix that. now amazingly after this election, all kinds of issues have come up and said there are potentials for problem and everyone seems to be saying move on. the only reason i can think that would be different was because the election outcome seemed to be different. and one side is now saying let's just move on and ignore this. in my state on election night, like 27 other states in the country, by that evening we were counting votes and all absentee ballots had been received. there was much less opportunity for accusations of fraud because all of our ballots were in. amazingly enough this november people in oklahoma were listening to other states saying things like we don't know how many more ballots there are left to count. we had been done for a week. we and 27 other states had been completed for a week. that gives opportunities for fraud and questions and problems that is a reasonable question to ask. it is reasonable to be able to ask if people can drift around and gather ballots from other people and do ballot harvesting and in some states that's legal. does it provide an opportunity for fraud? i think the obvious answer is yes. the obvious answer is if you mail a ballot to everyone in the state even if they didn't ask for it, does it provide an opportunity for fraud? especially when the state did not first purge or verify those addresses and sent thousands of ballots to people that no longer live there. i've talked to nevada residents that received multiple ballots at their home for people that no longer lived there. that's a problem. we should at least admit that's a problem and for some reason the other side was very focused on we have to fix the potential for problem from 2016 but in 2020 when there is potential for problem and things have that convenient shown everyone seems to say move along. let's not discuss this. there is a system called the eric system that is in place that 30 states cooperate with. it helps them verify if people have moved and registered in two different states or if they've moved into your state and they're registered somewhere else. it helps them determine if they are voting in two different states. only 30 states use that. other states are not. even of the 30 states that use it, not all of them are actually using it. they literally are on the system but not actually purging their rolls when they know people have moved out of their states and have been informed of this. in the eric system this year they identified 91,000 people that are registered voters that are dead. 91,000 that that one system had recognized. there are problems in the system and in this conversation that i've had with so many people. is it a problem people are voting in two states and dead and what i hear over and over again. this has been going on for years. so why don't we fix it? that should be the next statement. instead the statement seems to be let's just move along. mr. benal42,000 people in nevada voted more than once. 1500 people voted in nevada that were dead. 19,000 people voted though they did not live in nevada and they weren't a college student. 8,000 people voted from a non-existent address, 15,000 people voted though they were registered to a commercial address or vacant address and 4,000 people voted in nevada that are non-citizens. my question to you is in my states when we vote twice. we have that occasionally 50 times a year, we prosecute individuals that vote twice. of this 130,000 instances that you have identified from the 2020 election in nevada do you know of any prosecutions currently going on in nevada for any voter fraud? >> not yet, senator. that's extremely important. this has to be -- these laws have to be enforced. we, of course, i represent the trump campaign and the campaign's electors, i don't represent the government. we can't bring prosecutions. if we're going to enforce voter integrity laws, they must be enforced and we are confident that although it often takes a long time to put together a fraud case, although it takes prosecutors months and sometimes years to go through subpoenas and warrants and using the f.b.i. to go investigate these things, once a good hard look at these cases is examined, an honest look, if we do that there should be charges brought because the ranking member brought up in his remarks that when you lose the principle of one person, one vote, the ends result is authoritarianism. that's exactly what we're saying here today. >> mr. chairman, can i ask for one additional moment? judge starr, you've raised twice this issue about pennsylvania and that the laws of pennsylvania were changed. in oklahoma we did state bill 210 and state bill 1779 because we saw with the pandemic there would be problems. our legislature came into session, made a change to adjust for how we were going to do early ballots and voting. so because we knew it was the law that needed to be followed. was that done in pennsylvania and does it matter who sets the law and the rules for elections? >> no, it was not done. unfortunately in pennsylvania. the governor sought to change the law, the general assembly of pennsylvania had met, reviewed and made various and sundry and reforms and the pennsylvania supreme court made additional changes and those in my judgment were complete violations of the united states constitution and flagged as such by samuel alito. the oklahoma legislature did it the right way. >> judge starr, thank you very much. senator. >> thank you very much, just want to attest folks can hear me. >> they can. >> thank you very much, mr. chair and for our ranking member. i want to also thank all our witnesses for being here today and i would like to specifically acknowledge former cisa director krebs. i want to thank you for your work in standing up the agency as the first director and in securing our elections. i remain deeply troubled by your abrupt and unjustified dismissal which has made our country less safe. now more than ever the challenges of this pandemic and nation's increased reliance online, i want to express my thanks to you and the men and women at cisa to help make our community and countries safely. i have three questions for you, director krebs. let's start with this one. as the cisa director you tackled the rumor control effort. that's the name you gave it. rumor control is a resource featured on the website to debunk common misinformation and disinformation narratives. so first in your time as cisa director were you ever asked by any administration official to refrain from debunking disinformation and misinformation. >> i was never directly approached. i understand my staff one. if anyone had any problems with what was on rumor control i was the confirmed leader of the agency and i approved content and they would need to come talk to me about that. i never got that phone call or visit. >> but you are saying that staff did report to you that there was outreach from officials asking them to make changes? >> yes, ma'am. >> were you ever asked to take down an entry that debunked an conspiracy theory? >> not directly, no, ma'am. >> was your staff? >> they were asked about some of the content. i reiterated and reinforced i owned that content. if anybody had an issue with it they needed to talk to me. >> was it ever implied your job was at stake if you didn't ease up on debunking disinformation? >> i certainly never interpreted any statements or anything along those lines, no, ma'am. >> i would like to explore with you further perhaps after this panel some of what you just said in terms of your staff. i want to move on to a couple of other things just in the interest of time. director krebs, given your experience with tackling disinformation, i want to talk about the post election disinformation campaign that has been waged. the president and many others have tweeted outlandish claims of massive voter fraud and truly wild conspiracy theories. however, the president's lawyers won't or don't usually bring these same claims when they go into court. when they do, the judges, often conservative or republican-appointed judges have dismissed them. director krebs, given your experience with disinformation campaigns why do you think there is such a gulf between rhetoric and reality? what's the goal of this disinformation campaign? >> i think generally that disinformation now currently particularly domestically is being used to create confusion and drive a certain narrative but our point with rumor control at cisa was about identifying initially foreign activities, but it became more of a domestic or even uncertain origin. it was things again like hammer scorecard. some claims of malicious algorithms. they continue to this day. confusion being sown about how election machines are use and how they fit into process. even now in michigan right now with one of the counties there was a forensics audit done on some of the machines there and there was a group that released a report and it is a 22-page report. i looked at it and others have looked at it. to me it implies that those systems are compromised and not dependable and you can't trust the votes and other machines across the state. i was concerned and i looked at the report and it claims that there were there was a 60% error rate in the machines. so again i dug into that and it makes the claim that 68% of the votes cast are therefore not dependable and i've seen those claims being repeated on social media by the campaign, by the president. so i wanted to understand what that was all about. i looked at it and in fact it was not that there were 68% of the votes there were errors. it was the election management system's logs had recorded 68% of the logs themselves had some sort of alert rate. and that is being used to spin that that machine is not trustworthy. the report itself doesn't specify any of those errors except for one and it is on page 19 -- on page 20 and it says there is no permission to bracket zero bracket. that is being claimed to mean that somebody tried to get into the machine and wipe the records. so i looked at that and i said i don't know if it actually says that. something jumped out at me having worked at microsoft that these are windows-based machines. election management system is a windows-based machine and it is coded with a programming language called c sharp. there is no permission to bracket zero bracket is a place holder for a parameter. so it may be that it's just not good coding but it certainly doesn't mean that somebody tried to get in there and zero. they misinterpreted the language in what they saw in their forensic audit. that's just one example. they misinterpret and commissioner palmer can talk to us whether there is a 90 day safe harbor rule and i'm seeing these reports that are factually inaccurate continue to be promoted. that's what rumor control is all about. that's what i'm continuing to do today based on my experience and understanding how these system work. we have to stop this. it is undermining confidence in democracy. >> i thank you so much for that statement. i note a couple other people have gone a little over their time and i have one more question and i would like to ask it. >> sure. >> director krebs, i thank you for that response. i think it's a very important example of spinning and disinformation that is happening and puts confidence and people at risk. you have noted in the past we have a very diffuse election system administered at the local level. individual polling locations there are often numerous nonpartisan officials involved in administering a community's voting process. that diffusion of responsibility also makes it extremely unlikely that there would be a single point of failure or fraud that could sway an election. director krebs, you have worked with the numerous election official efs across state and local governments. can you speak to how the diffuse nature of our election systems affects the security of our elections and just also in the interest of time i want you to comment, too, sadly some of these nonpartisan official s have had death threats. can you speak to the impact of these threats and do you think the president and his allies have done enough to condemn the threats of violence? >> having been a recipient of some of them. i think it's again an affront to democracy that the citizens of the united states of america responsible for executing this sacred democratic institution of elections are being threatened on a daily basis. i mean, you name it. whether it's emails, phone calls, people showing up at your house. this is not the america i recognize. it has to stop. we need everyone across the leadership ranks to stand up. i think i would appreciate more support from my own party, the republican party to call this stuff out and end it. we have to move on. we have a president-elect in president-elect biden. look at georgia. brad raffensperger, gabriel sterling, jeff duncan. these are republicans that are putting country over party. they are being subjected to horrific threats as a result. this is not america. >> thank you, mr. krebs. thank you, mr. chair for your indulgence. >> senator scott went to vote so senator rosen available? >> yes, i'm here. thank you, mr. chairman. good good morning to all the witnesses here today. i want to start by saying as members of congress, we take an oath to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. we have a responsibility to our constituents in our nation to defend our democratic practice. with that being said, mr. krebs, we thank you for your service to our nation and for upholding your oath to defend the constitution for foreign and domestic threats. your effort to protect the integrity of the democratic progress ensures that the 2020 election was the most secure in american history and certified by the department of homeland security. i would also publicly like to thank the election workers who despite the comments in the media and here today work long hours to ensure that the elections were free, fair, and secure. both are republican secretary of state and our democratic attorney general have stated there is no evidence over fraud, they have heard in nevada and the highest court is of the same, and i will not give this false narrative about my state any more attention than it is already unfortunately received. however, we do know as foreign adversaries like russia have peddled the false narratives. september 3rd, the department of homeland security has been warned that russia has been spreading this information since march. this evidence is alarming. according to the head of the election, new sources were already pushing the narrative that the u.s. does not possess free and fair elections. last month the partnership found that social media accounts tied to internet research agencies and providing claims of election fraud leading up to the 2020 election. mr. krebs to reiterate, was there any system successfully hacked by foreign adversaries in the 2020 election? >> being out of the job now for five weeks or so, based on what i understood when i left, i'm not aware of any voting machine involved in the casting or accounting of votes in the selection or the certification process that was accessed by a foreign embassy.

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