Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, says a future step in his panel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election will include testimony from technology officials for the Democratic National Committee.
During testimony Wednesday before Schiff’s panel, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that the DNC refused his agency’s help after it was hacked by the Russians. Schiff, D-Calif., wants to know why and said his panel will hear directly from those who were most closely involved.
“We’re going to be brining in officials, in fact, in the very near future from the DNC, some of their tech people, to find out what was the situation and was there an unwillingness or a reluctance to share their server with the FBI or the DHS, and if so why,” he told NPR’s Audie Cornish later in the day.
Schiff said he also wants to know whether the government adequately impressed upon the DNC how serious the intrusion was.
Instead of having the government help, the DNC turned to a private security firm. However, the story behind the communication between the government and DNC was somewhat muddled when former DNC chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said that neither DHS nor the FBI contacted her about the hack. Wasserman Schultz was head of the DNC up until last summer, when she stepped down after WikiLeaks published stolen DNC emails showing that she and other DNC officials worked to undermine Sanders in favor of Clinton.
Schiff also complained Wednesday about the Obama administration’s decision to wait months to share what it knew about Russian interference with the public, amid a presidential election, “out of fear they would be perceived as affecting [the] result.”
“That was all outweighed, or should have been outweighed, by the public’s need to know,” he said on NPR.
