Committee has a Hearing Committee on the Justice Department track task force addressing threats against Election Officials. This is just over three hours. This hearing will come to order. Today the Judiciary Committee is holding the firstever hearing on a growing danger to our democracy. Threats against election workers. In a recent survey went out of every six election workers reported receiving threats because their jobs are on the front lines of democracy. Many of the stats were inspired by false claims or fraud surrounding the last election. Claims that culminated in president trumps big lie. Night last summer, the department of justice launched a task force to address the unprecedented threats that election workers across america are facing. This morning, for the first time the department will testify about the progress that has been made by the task force since it was formed. We will also hear from these and Infrastructure Security Agency which plays an instant been instant indispensable role in securing our election. We will hear from Public Officials who have received Death Threats because of their efforts to protect voting. Before we begin, i want to play a video to put this in perspective. Its a rigged. Election donald trump, launching an assault on the integrity of the election. Releasing a barrage and false claims of corruption and fraud without evidence. We were winning, and then our number started getting miraculously whittled away in secret. We have so much evidence, so much proof. Donald trump jr. And other allies threaten to turn the president s base against republicans who do not rush to the president s defence. Fight, each and every one of these battles to the. Death threats and lies are also having a detrimental effect on poll workers, on regular everyday citizens. She is a vote scammer. But those are not suitcases. 11 alive has confirmed those are the stat standard ballot containers used by Fulton County. He ruined these womens lives. She describes a lawsuit how she left her home of 20 years hours before a mob of Trump Supporters surrounded her home. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you . I felt like it was all my fall like if i would have never decided to be an elections worker. People were lying, spreading rumors and lies, attacking my mom. As disturbing as that is it is just one part of the trump fueled intimidation effort that has been waged against freeman and election workers like. Are they had assault rifles. A pipe bomb. Youre going to get where whats coming to. You they threatened my. Life we had officers on the roof of our building. We had go bags ready for my family my children. In places like arizona. We are coming for you. We will find you. In wisconsin. We are gonna hang. You from georgia. Do you hear the anger in my voice . We are ready to pounce. And minnesota. Hes probably going to be executed for treason. This has to stop. This is elections. This is the backbone of democracy. And all of you who have not said a words are complicit in this. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed. We have discussed the issue of violence in the past. There has been a consensus on this committee, and i hope it continues in the congress, that there is no place for violence whatsoever in our constitutional systems of government. Neither on the right and were on the left. I want to tell the story of ruby freeman. Thanks to the january Six Committee, Many Americans know her story. The 62 year old grandmother and in Fulton County georgia. She and her daughter seamus were to be hundreds of thousands of americans who work to the polls on election day 2020. Soon after election day, they found themselves at the center of the big lie with president ial counsel Rudy Giuliani promoting a viral video that giuliani claimed showed miss freeman and miss malls counting illegal ballots. In reality, Julian Julians claim was false. The only thing miss freeman and miss moss were guilty of was performing their civic duty, diligently, faithfully, legally. The republicanled georgia secretary of states office, and the Georgia Bureau of investigation immediately refuted really giulianis lie. But the damage had already been done. For months, the former president s allies, and the rightwing Media Echo Chamber relentlessly slandered miss freeman and her daughter. They received hundreds of threatening, racist messages and phone calls. Miss freeman was repeatedly harassed and threatened in her home which she fled surely before january 6th after the fbi warned her that they could no longer protect her. Miss mott left her jaw with the Fulton County registration on the elections department, where she proudly served for nearly eight decades. And just last week, Court Documents indicated that miss freeman and miss mosss names were written on a path of paper labeled list which was found in the home of a member of the oath keepers who is charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with january 6th attacks. Ruby freeman and she most are not alone. Despite administrating what the former president S Administration called what they called, quote, the most secure election in american history, election workers of both Political Parties have been forced to take extraordinary steps to protect themselves and their families. Many of these election workers have spent their own money installing elaborate Home Security systems. Others like a county clerk in colorado have begun to wear a bullet proof vest to work. Over the past several months, my office has heard from individual election workers who shared their stories of violent threats. Many of them have submitted statements for our hearing. These threats are taking a disastrous toll on our democracy. According to a recent survey, roughly one in five Election Officials plan on leaving their job ahead of the next president ial election. This mass exodus coincides with ongoing organized effort by big lie promoters to secure jobs administering elections across our country. We saw last night at the republican primary in arizona. Our democracy cannot survive if we allow harassment and intimidation of Election Officials to become the new new norm. As we look ahead to this years election, fewer than 100 days away, i hope that we learn the lessons from the last election. The former president s plot to overturn the election we tap it on america. We saw that personally here in the capital on january six 2021. Public servants, like ruby freeman, and seamus, are living with the consequences of this big lie every day of their lives. I look forward to learning more about the steps the Justice Department and is taking to protect Election Officials in the months leading up to this election and i hope every member of this committee will join me in condemning the threats that those officials continue to face. With, that i turn to Ranking Member grassley for his opening. Thank you, chairman sherman. Our hearing today is on threats against election workers. Threats of violence are Never Acceptable. Any threat of violence. Violence is a very major problem in america today. With rates of Violent Crime skyrocketing across the country. Not since the 1990s have we seen these levels of murder, assault, carjacking, robbery, attacks on police and other Violent Crimes. The start of this Violent Crime wave began in 2020 as police nationwide were pulled off the streets. A study from the council of criminal justice showed that murders in major cities in 2021 were 44 more than in 2019. So far this year major cities with baltimore, los angeles, philadelphia, washington d. C. , atlanta, and new york city, are already worse than in 2021. The baseline is rising. High rates of Violent Crime are becoming the new norm. Some of the main causes of this rising Violent Crime are anti police rhetoric, d policing efforts, progressive prosecution, bill reform, defund the police movement. We talk about the crisis faced by Law Enforcement officers last week in this very committee. In our hearing about attacks on police. This crisis in policing is happening at the same time that progressive prosecutors refused to hold violent criminals accountable for their crimes. Witness after witness in this committee has told us that bill reform helps to release violent criminals who then can go commit more crimes. We all heard about the horrible story that occurred at walk gentle wisconsin when a man drove into a parade of people killing six people and wounding many more. He was out on bail after a Violent Crime. He should never have been free but a progressive prosecutor and lax laws allowed him to get out and kill all of those people. Research is clear that a huge amount of Violent Crime in any city is committed by a very small number of repeat offenders. Just think, if police and prosecutors can focus on those offenders, they can improve the situation very significantly. But because of difficulties at the state level in terms of understaffed Police Department, progressive prosecutors who turn a blind eye to Violent Crime, and state legislatures who often soften criminal laws and implement bail reform, states dont seem to be solving this problem nor are they able and capable of doing it all alone. Federal support is necessary. Congress must treat Violent Crime as a very top priority. For this reason, last week i introduced combatting violent and dangerous crime act. The bill contains common sense proposals to reduce a spike in Violent Crime in the nation. Proposals that would expand federal prosecution options for offenses like murder, carjacking, bank robbery, and assault on police. All of my fellow republicans on this committee have cosponsored this bill, and i thank them for doing it. The department of justice should also be treating Violent Crime as a top priority. But that is not what we are seeing from this department of justice. In the summer of 2020, under the trump administration, the department of justice to conducted operation legend. Which was targeted towards prosecuting violent criminals in places in america that had the worst rates of Violent Crime. This effort was a supplement to the overstretched Law Enforcement and Court Systems which simply could not deal with the surge in Violent Crimes that they were seeing. But whenever a question about Violent Crime comes out, that department of justice only wants to talk about gun control, punishing criminals who commit Violent Crime. I wrote a letter to the department of justice on february the 14th, 2022, to ask that department to answer this misguided and politicized approach to Law Enforcement. Now we are here on the subject of this hearing more than a year ago the department of justice formed a task force on threats to election workers. It appears that only four cases have been announced as a result of this tax force ever. That is after more than a years work. Just four. And there have been no charged acts of violence against election workers. These prosecutors may be very worthy but the existence of a full dodgy task force is confusing. Compared to operation legend which resulted in about 1500 prosecutions for Crimes Involving guns and violence, all of that in less than six months. In light of garlands passed focus on intimidating parents who were concerned about school boards, i fear that there is a political element to the decision to focus on this area. ThiS Administration doesnt want to talk about the failed policy of democratic cities where crime is spiking up. But a Law Enforcement agency like the department of justice should not be participating in those sorts of politics. The department of justice is the highest Law Enforcement agency in america. It must focus its priorities on charges facing america today. That means addressing Violent Crime,. If we can only reduce the homicide numbers to where they were before the defund the police movement, we could save as many as 6000 lives per year. Because that is how much it has picked up in the last two years. Yet there is no merger surge task forest. No task force for combatting the 20 year high and police killings. No carjacking task force, certainly no task force for the threats and our sons against Crisis Pregnancy Centers and churches in the wake of the dobbs decision. For the but the department of justice is not choosing what to convene task forces on by levels of violence. They are choosing a political message i believe, and that will have a real consequence on the safety and lives of Many Americans. I yield. Thank, you senator grassi. And the current congress, this Judiciary Committee has held hearings on Law Enforcement officers safety, mass shootings, domestic terrorism, protecting children from gun violence, carjackings, heat crimes, reducing violence in chicago, violence against women, and more including multiple oversight hearings of Law Enforcement emergencies. We have another oversight hearing tomorrow with the director of the fbi schedule. The subject of this hearing is threats to election workers. We have two panels. The first panel we welcome the assistant attorney general kenneth bleep, assistant to the attorney general kenneth levy is a longtime federal prosecutor who oversees the Justice DepartmentCriminal Division, including the Election Threats Task force. We also welcome kim lineman, senior Election Security adviser at cisa, the department of Homeland Security cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Prior to his system, miss weinman was washingtons elected secretary of state. So she certainly knows this field very well. And we welcome her. Im gonna ask them both to be sworn in. They will then be given five minutes each for Opening Statements and then a round of questioning from the senators up to five minutes each. And then our second panel will be recognized. If you please stand. Raise your right hand. Do you swear the the testimony youre about to give before this committee will be the full truth, the whole, truth and nothing but the truth. So help you. God let me lets the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. I will allow you to start. We good morning, chairman. Make sure your mic is. On good morning chairman german, Ranking Member grassley, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to the department of justice to appear before you today to discuss election threats. Again, my name is candace bullied and i am the assistant attorney general of the departments Criminal Division testifying today on behalf of the department. The department of justice is committed to addressing threats to the state and local Election Community. The courageous indicated debit men and women who are responsible for administering the most fundamental aspect of our democracy, our elections, should not face threats for merely doing their jobs. These victims often volunteers are people from across our country and across the political spectrum. These are people we have sworn to protect. Through direct engagement with the Election Community, training of our federal state and local Law Enforcement agencies, Grant Funding for in his Election Security, and federal criminal investigation prosecution of election related threats where appropriate, the department is working intently to prepare and protect our Election Officials and their staff as we approach the 2022 midterm elections. Last june the department launched the Election Threats Task force to combat the sharp