Uranium One Goes Back to ‘Senator’ Hillary Clinton

Posted on October 27, 2017October 27, 2017 by Denise Simon

The Clinton’s were masters at cunning operations for power, money and access. Along the way, they exploited people for help and threw others under the bus. The Clinton’s were crafty and cunning enough to ensure their fingerprints were never on the evidence and deferred to loyal lawyers due to the ability to apply attorney client privileges.

Going back in time and space with Hillary takes us to at least as far back as when she was a New York senator, the foundation and her craft in politics. Conspiracy and connivance were and are a daily action by Hillary. Not all the blame with Uranium One belongs to Hillary. There are her lawyers and powerbrokers globally that belong to this network.

Russia has intruded into all things America because at least Hillary and the Obama administration allowed them in.

There were several members of congress that had various depths of knowledge regarding selling uranium to Russia and expressed concerns including documents to Obama administration officials only to get nothing. Assigned FBI agents admitted being stonewalled due to ‘politics’ as well to the informant.

So, what did the media know and did they report? Yes, some of them for sure, yet there were so many scandals running concurrently, it was hardly noticed if at all. Even the New York Times reported.

As a refresher:

2015/The story involves a Canadian company called Uranium One, a Russian investor, the State Department, and The Clinton Foundation.

“As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation,” The Times reports.

Here’s the high-level summary. There are more details below.

• Canadian company Uranium One owned uranium mines in the US and Kazakhstan.

• Uranium One’s mines account for 20% of the uranium mined in the US. Uranium is used for nuclear weapons, and it’s considered a strategic asset to the US.

• Russia’s state-owned atomic agency, Rosatom, bought a 17% stake in Uranium One in June 2009.

• The Russian atomic agency decided it wanted to own 51% of Uranium One in June 2010. To take a majority stake in Uranium One, it needed approval from a special committee that included the State Department, which Hillary Clinton led at the time.

• Investors in Uranium One gave money to the Clinton Foundation starting in 2005 and through 2011. On June 29, 2010, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to speak in Russia by an investment bank with ties to Russia’s government that had a buy rating on Uranium One’s stock.

• In January 2013, despite assurances to the contrary, a subsidiary of Rosatom took over 100% of the company and delisted it from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

• Clinton was required to disclose all of her foundation’s contributors before she became secretary of state, but the Clintons did not disclose millions of dollars donated by the chairman of Uranium One while the review of the deal was ongoing.

“Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million,” The Times reports. “Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.”

The Times’ revelations appear to have originated from reporting in “Clinton Cash,” a forthcoming book by conservative author Peter Schweizer, which was provided to the newspaper for advance reporting. The report said The Times “scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.”

The Clinton campaign and its allies have aggressively dismissed the book as partisan conspiracy-mongering. In a statement to The Times, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the State Department was only one of multiple US government bodies that approved the transaction.

“[No one] has produced a shred of evidence supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation,” Fallon told The Times. “To suggest the State Department, under then-Secretary Clinton, exerted undue influence in the US government’s review of the sale of Uranium One is utterly baseless.”

Here are some key points from the Times report:

According to The Times, Uranium One’s involvement with the Clintons stretches back to 2005, when former President Bill Clinton accompanied Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra to Kazakhstan, where they met with authoritarian president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Going against American foreign policy at the time, Bill Clinton expressed support for Nazarbayev’s bid to lead an international elections monitoring group.

Soon after, Giustra’s company, UrAsia Energy (the predecessor to Uranium One) won stakes in three uranium mines controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-run uranium agency. Months after the deal, Giustra reportedly donated $31.3 million to Clinton’s foundation.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev with former US President Bill Clinton in Almaty in 2005. Clinton traveled to the ex-Soviet Central Asian state to sign an agreement with the government, admitting Kazakhstan into the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative Procurement Consortium.REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov SZH/DH

After the legality of the Kazakhstan deal was called into question, Uranium One asked the American embassy in Kazakhstan for help. Uranium One’s executive vice president copied then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a cable saying he wanted an official written confirmation that the company’s licenses in Kazakhstan were still valid, according to The Times. Soon after, the embassy’s energy officer met with Kazakh officials.

In June 2009 ARMZ, a subsidiary of Russia’s atomic energy agency Rosatom, finalized a deal for a 17% stake in Uranium One. In June 2010, the Russian government sought a 51% controlling stake in the company that would have to be approved by the American government. Rosatom also said that after that, the agency “did not plan to increase its stake in Uranium One or to take the company private,” The Times noted in a timeline of the events.

Investors with ties to Uranium One and UrAsia donated millions to the foundation in 2010 and 2011. These donations were disclosed. In addition to this, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to speak in Moscow in June 2010, the same month that the Russians closed the deal for the majority stake in Uranium One. The speaking fee was one of Clinton’s highest, according to The Times.

The US Committee on Foreign Investment, which includes the attorney general, the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy, and the secretary of state, were charged with reviewing the deal that would give Rosatom a majority stake because uranium is “considered a strategic asset with implications for national security,” according to The Times.

The concern was American dependence on foreign uranium. The Times notes that while the US “gets one-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces only around 20% of the uranium it needs, and most plants have only 18 to 36 months of reserves.”

Four members of Congress signed a letter expressing concern over the deal, and two others drafted legislation to kill it. One senator contended that the deal “would give the Russian government control over a sizable portion of America’s uranium production capacity” as well as “a significant stake in uranium mines in Kazakhstan.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission made assurances that the US uranium would be preserved for domestic use regardless of the deal.

Final say over the deal rested with the foreign investment committee, “including Mrs. Clinton — whose husband was collecting millions of dollars in donations from people associated with Uranium One,” The Times notes.

After the deal was approved in October 2010, Rosatom’s chief executive, Sergei Kiriyenko, said in an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20% of US reserves.”

A source with knowledge of the Clintons’ fundraising pointed out to The Times that people donate because they hope that money will buy influence. The source said: “Why do you think they are doing it — because they love them?”

Despite claims by Russia that the country didn’t intend to increase its stake in Uranium One or take the company private, ARMZ — the subsidiary of Russia’s atomic energy agency — took over 100% of the company and delisted it from the Toronto Stock Exchange in January 2013.

“Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown,” The Times concluded. “But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.”

Now that Hillary Clinton formally announced a presidential run, her foundation has come under increasing scrutiny.

Her family’s charities are refiling at least five tax returns after Reuters found errors in how the foundations reported donations from governments, the news wire reported this week.

UN/Harvard Comprehensive WMD Programs in N Korea/ISIS

Posted on October 23, 2017October 23, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer:

A North Korean mining firm, reputed to be a front for Pyongyang’s weapons development programs, attempted to ship materiel to Syrian officials tied to the country’s chemical weapons program, according to a confidential United Nations assessment of international sanctions against the North.

Details of the U.N. findings, first reported by Reuters, found officials from Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation {KOMID) had sent a pair of shipments of unknown contents to members of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre or SSRC. The Syrian government organization has been responsible for developing chemical and biological weapons for regime in Damascus since the 1970’s.

The shipments never arrived in Syria after being intercepted by international authorities from U.N. partner nations, Reuters reports. “Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria. Another member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria,” the U.N. review states.

KOMID has repeatedly trafficked in materials associated with ballistic missile development and other conventional arms programs, and was blacklisted by the U.N. security council as a result of those activities, Reuters reports.

As a result, the U.N. “is investigating reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms cooperation between Syria and [North Korea],” the report states. More here.

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Quoting the South Korean Defense Ministry, it said: ‘North Korea has 13 types of biological weapons agents which it can weaponize within ten days, and anthrax and smallpox are the likely agents it would deploy.’

***

Harvard produced a report with the summary in part that reads:

Amidst the growing threat of North Korea’s nuclear program, the assas-

sination of Kim Jong-Un’s half-brother via VX nerve agent in February

2017 brought renewed interest in North Korea’s other weapons of

mass destruction (WMD) programs—chemical and biological weap-

ons. If used on a large scale, these weapons can cause not only tens of

thousands of deaths, but also create panic and paralyze societies. Nev-

ertheless, the vividness of the nuclear threat has overshadowed other

weapons programs, limiting the attention and policy input that they

deserve. This paper focuses on North Korea’s biological weapons (BW).

Accurately assessing the threat from North Korea’s biological weapons

is challenging. Whereas North Korea has publicly declared its will to

become a nuclear power many times, it has been less overt about its

intention or capability for biological weapons. BW capabilities are

inherently hard to detect and measure. While nuclear programs can

be monitored by the number of nuclear tests and the success of missile

tests, weaponizing and cultivating pathogens can stay invisible behind

closed doors. Moreover, equipment used for BW production are often

dual-use for agriculture, making external monitoring and verification

virtually impossible. Limited information on North Korea’s BW pro-

gram leads to a low threat perception that may undermine preparation

and response efforts. The full 46 page report is here.

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A German newspaper reported last week that at least one European intelligence agency has already warned that the Islamic State is exploring the use of chemicals for attacks in Europe. Such an eventuality would be a radical departure from prior attacks by the Islamic State in the West. In the past, the militant group has shown a strong preference for low-tech means of dispensing violence, such as firearms, vehicles and knives. But it has utilized chemical substances in Iraq and Syria, and its technical experts have amassed significant knowledge about weaponized chemicals.

Last week, several European and American counter-terrorism experts participated in a bioterrorism preparedness exercise in Berlin. Codenamed WUNDERBAUM, the exercise was one of several anti-terrorism drills that have taken place in the German capital this year alone. But last week’s drill was the first with an exclusive focus on preparing for a bioterrorist attack. German authorities insisted that the drill was not sparked by concrete intelligence of a pending biological or chemical attack. But the Berlin-based national newspaper Die Welt claimed on Friday that it had information about at least one such warning by a European intelligence agency. The paper did not name the agency, but said that “a foreign intelligence agency” had warned European security authorities of a possible terrorist attack by the Islamic State using chemical weapons. According to Die Welt, the warning was “explicit” and cautioned that the Sunni militant group may be preparing to use improvised bombs utilizing chemicals, including toxic gasses. The warning was communicated to European intelligence agencies, including Germany’s said Die Welt.

How likely is such a scenario? Terrorist groups tend to be conservative in their use of lethal technologies. They typically opt for time-tested methods using explosives or firearms, because these have a higher of success in comparison to more sophisticated, hi-tech weapons. The latter are also more expensive to build and require scientific and technical capabilities that are not typically available to terrorist organizations. Militants are usually strapped for cash, and are not science-savvy, so exceptions to this general trend are rare. But the Islamic State is different. Ever since it made its eventful appearance in 2013, the group has experimented with a variety of chemicals, including nerve agents. It is known that it initiated a modest chemical weapons program, headed by Iraqi engineers who were trained under Iraq’s late ruler, Saddam Hussein. One of them, Abu Malik, was killed in an American airstrike in early 2015. Another, Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who headed the Islamic State’s chemical weapons program, was captured by US Special Forces in northern Iraq in March of last year.

The Islamic State’s rapid loss of territory in the past year has delivered serious blows to the group’s military infrastructure. Its chemical weapons program, which was targeted early on by the US, Iran and other belligerents, is now almost certainly defunct. But many of its engineers and technical experts are still at large, as are those who were trained by them during the group’s heyday in Iraq and Syria. Despite its continuing retreat, the Islamic State is still capable of employing chemicals that are relatively easy to procure, such as chlorine, hydrogen sulfide, or even various fertilizers, to construct explosives or nerve agents. Last summer, members of a terrorist cell with connections to the Islamic State were arrested in Sydney, Australia. By the time they were arrested, they had already procured significant quantities of hydrogen sulfide and had even tested the chemical, in an apparent preparation for a large-scale attack.

The Australian case shows that the Islamic State is not averse to the tactical use of chemical weapons in terrorist attacks. As the militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate is disintegrating, and its leaders feel like they have nothing left to lose, the deployment of unconventional terrorist technologies should not be excluded as a tactical option for the organization. Western counter-terrorism officials should actively and immediately prepare for such an eventuality.

***

For the FBI Haters, Check out Operation Cross Country

Posted on October 18, 2017October 18, 2017 by Denise Simon

FBI Announces Results of Operation Cross Country XI

Underage Sex Trafficking Crackdown Leads to Recovery of 84 Minors

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), announced today that 84 minors were recovered and 120 traffickers were arrested as part of Operation Cross Country XI, a nationwide effort focusing on underage human trafficking that ran from October 12-15, 2017.

This is the 11th iteration of the FBI-led Operation Cross Country (OCC), which took place this year in 55 FBI field offices and involved 78 state and local task forces, consisting of hundreds of law enforcement partners. This year’s coordinated operations took place with several international partners, including Canada (Operation Northern Spotlight), the United Kingdom (Aident 8), Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines.

“We at the FBI have no greater mission than to protect our nation’s children from harm. Unfortunately, the number of traffickers arrested—and the number of children recovered—reinforces why we need to continue to do this important work,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “This operation isn’t just about taking traffickers off the street. It’s about making sure we offer help and a way out to these young victims who find themselves caught in a vicious cycle of abuse.”

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Operation Cross Country XI

The 11th iteration of Operation Cross Country, the FBI’s annual law enforcement action focused on recovering underage victims of prostitution, concluded with the recovery of 84 sexually exploited juveniles.

As part of Operation Cross Country XI, FBI agents and task force officers staged operations in hotels, casinos, and truck stops, as well as on street corners and Internet websites. The youngest victim recovered during this year’s operation was 3 months old, and the average age of victims recovered during the operation was 15 years old. Minors recovered during Cross Country Operations are offered assistance from state protective services and the FBI’s Victim Services Division. Depending on the level of need, victims are offered medical and mental health counseling, as well as a number of other services.

“Child sex trafficking is happening in every community across America, and at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, we’re working to combat this problem every day,” said NCMEC President and CEO John Clark. “We’re proud to work with the FBI on Operation Cross Country to help find and recover child victims. We hope OCC generates more awareness about this crisis impacting our nation’s children.”

Operation Cross Country XI is part of the FBI’s Innocence Lost National Initiative, which began in 2003 and has yielded more than 6,500 child identifications and locations. For additional information on Operation Cross Country XI and the Innocence Lost initiative, please visit www.fbi.gov.

Examples of stories from various cities that took part in Operation Cross Country XI:

On October 13, FBI Denver recovered two minor girls—one 3-month-old and one five-year-old. The subject, a friend of the children’s family, offered an undercover officer access to the two children for sexual purposes in exchange for $600. The FBI is working with Child Protective Services to conduct a forensic interview and secure safe placement of the children. The subject was placed under arrest.
Also on October 13, a 16-year old female victim was recovered by FBI El Paso after an undercover agent called an online advertisement for entertainment. Shortly thereafter, the agent met with a 21-year-old female, who offered a fee of $200 to engage in sexual intercourse with her and another female, the 16-year-old victim. Further investigations revealed that a second adult female drove the minor and the 21-year-old to the undercover agent’s location. Both female subjects have been arrested on federal charges.

Note to Editors: B-Roll and interviews associated with Operation Cross Country can be downloaded at www.fbi.gov.

Scope of Russian Troll Operation Explained

Posted on October 17, 2017October 17, 2017 by Denise Simon

Information warfare = Troll warfare

Russian journalists publish massive investigation into St. Petersburg troll factory’s U.S. operations

A day after Dozhd television published an interview with a former member of Russia’s infamous Internet Research Agency, the magazine RBC released a new detailed report on the same organization’s efforts to meddle in U.S. domestic politics. Meduza summarizes RBC’s new report here.

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The Internet Research Agency, Russia’s infamous “troll farm,” reportedly devoted up to a third of its entire staff to meddling in U.S. politics during the 2016 presidential election. At the peak of the campaign, as many as 90 people were working for the IRA’s U.S. desk, sources told RBC, revealing that the entire agency employs upwards of 250 people. Salaries for staff working in the U.S. department apparently range from 80,000 to 120,000 rubles ($1,400 to $2,100) per month.

The head of the IRA’s U.S. desk is apparently a man originally from Azerbaijan named Dzheikhun Aslanov (though he denies any involvement with the troll factory).

In August and September this year, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter suspended 118 communities and accounts run by the St. Petersburg “troll factory,” disabling a network capable of reaching 6 million subscribers. In 2016, at the height of the U.S. presidential campaign, this network reportedly produced content that reached 30 million people each week.

A source also told RBC that the Internet Research Agency spent almost $80,000 over two years, hiring roughly 100 local American activists to stage about 40 rallies in different cities across the United States. The activists were hired over the Internet, communicating in English, without their knowledge that they were accepting money or organizing support from a Russian organization. According to RBC, internal records from the IRA verify its role in these activities.

The main activity in the troll factory’s U.S. desk was to incite racial animosity (playing both sides of the issue), and promoting the secession of Texas, objections to illegal immigration, and gun rights.

RBC estimates that the Internet Research Agency’s total salary expenses approach $1 million per year, with another $200,000 allocated to buying ads on social media and hiring local activists in the U.S.

According to RBC, the IRA still has a U.S. desk, though its staff has apparently dropped to 50 employees.

Note: Formally, the Internet Research Agency ceased to exist roughly two years ago, rebranding itself under different names, but sources say the organization continues to operate as before.

***

One part of the factory had a particularly intriguing name and mission: a “Department of Provocations” dedicated to sowing fake news and social divisions in the West, according to internal company documents obtained by CNN.

Prigozhin is one of the Kremlin’s inner circle. His company is believed to be a main backer of the St. Petersburg-based “Internet Research Agency” (IRA), a secretive technology firm, according to US officials and the documents reviewed by CNN. Prigozhin was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in December of 2016 for providing financial support for Russia’s military occupation of Ukraine. Two of his companies, including his catering business, were also sanctioned by Treasury this year.

CNN has examined scores of documents leaked from Prigozhin’s companies that show further evidence of his links to the troll factory.

One contract provided IRA with ways to monitor social media and a “system of automized promotion in search engines.”

Prigozhin has a colorful past. He spent nine years in prison in the 1980s for fraud and robbery, according to Russian media reports. After his release, he went into the catering business — renovating a boat and opening New Island, one of a half-dozen upscale restaurants he owns in St. Petersburg. Putin turned to him to cater his birthday parties as well as dinners with visiting leaders, including President Bush and Jacques Chirac of France. A headline in The Moscow Times referred to Prigozhin as Putin’s “Personal Chef.”

Prigozhin subsequently won lucrative catering contracts for schools and Russia’s armed forces. He escorted Putin around his new food-processing factory in 2010. By then he was very much a Kremlin insider with a growing commercial empire. More here.

***

Trolling NATO? Yuppers

Seventy percent of Russian-language tweets targeting NATO military activities in Eastern Europe are generated by automated Russian trolls, according to a survey done by the military alliance.

“Two in three Twitter users who write in Russian about the NATO presence in Eastern Europe are robotic or ‘bot’ accounts,” the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence stated in a report made public this week.

The Russian bots sent 84 percent of all Russian language messages. English language tweets against the alliance also were found to be automated, with some 46 percent generated by automated Twitter accounts.

The report criticized the global social media platform for not doing enough to counter Russian bot activities on Twitter. “Our impression is that Twitter in Russian is policed less effectively than it is in English,” the report said.

A Twitter spokesman could not be reached for comment. Colin Crowell, Twitter’s vice president for public policy, stated in a recent post on the company website that “we strictly prohibit the use of bots and other networks of manipulation to undermine the core functionality of our service.” Read more here.

Should Voting Machines be Part of Critical Infrastructure?

Posted on October 16, 2017October 16, 2017 by Denise Simon

At present, there are sixteen critical infrastructure sectors, including twenty subsectors that are eligible to receive prioritized cybersecurity assistance from the Department of Homeland Security. The existing critical infrastructure sectors are:

Chemical
Commercial Facilities
Communications
Critical Manufacturing
Dams
Defense Industrial Base
Emergency Services
Energy
Financial Services
Food and Agriculture
Government Facilities
Healthcare and Public Health
Information Technology
Nuclear Reactors, Material, and Waste
Transportation Systems
Water and Wastewater Systems

***

WE: op election officials from around the country met this weekend to create the formal organization to hash out what powers and lines of communications the Department of Homeland Security should have after the department designated voting systems in the states and territories as “critical infrastructure” earlier this year.

By voting to adopt a charter for a “Government Coordinating Council,” the secretaries of state now have a group that has an official channel and a single “voice” to communicate with DHS.

The move marks the first major step in the coming together between the nonpartisan National Association of Secretaries of State, or NASS, and DHS, amidst a contentious and sometimes mistrusting year.

“The other importance of the coordinating council actually being formed, is that there is so much activity on the federal level regarding legislation, I think this will give us, hopefully, a venue to help us inform members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that states are taking an active role and we are doing a lot to prepare ourselves for the 2018 elections and beyond,” said NASS President and Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson.

Lawson and six other secretaries of state were in Atlanta this weekend for the first real efforts at coordinating between the states and DHS.

Although DHS has insisted from the start their “critical infrastructure” designation doesn’t give them any actual powers or authority over state and local voting systems, local officials have been wary. They say they can’t be sure DHS wasn’t encroaching on authority reserved explicitly to the states until DHS had clearly delineated their mission and what they hoped to accomplish with the critical infrastructure tag.

NASS and even U.S. senators and representatives expressed serious concern that although DHS knew for months about attempted “hacks” around the time of the 2016 elections, the affected states weren’t notified by DHS until this past September.

When the local election officials were finally notified, it immediately generated headlines around the country that “21 states” were the victims of some kind of hacking attempts on their voting systems, or on computer systems that may have been linked to the same offices as the voting systems.

However, in the intervening weeks, at least four states have come forward – California, Texas, Wisconsin, and Arizona – and disputed to some degree the DHS finding that they were the victims of a hack attempt.

Elected officials on Capitol Hill were upset as well when the “21 states” news broke.

“It’s unacceptable that it took almost a year after the election to notify states that their elections systems were targeted, but I’m relieved that DHS has acted upon our numerous requests and is finally informing the top elections officials in all 21 affected states that Russian hackers tried to breach their systems in the run up to the 2016 election,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has taken an active role in trying to look at election vulnerabilities from 2016 in order to create more voting security in the future.

Lawson said NASS officials were still concerned about the lack of communication, but were also not trying to harp on the topic at this weekend’s meeting in Atlanta.

“I can’t say we’ve set it [communications issues] aside, but I can say we are just trying to make sure that things like this don’t happen again, that we all use the same terminology, that there’s a chain of communication that needs to take place,” Lawson told the WashingtonExaminer.

“We’re cautiously optimistic that things are going to get better,” she said.

Besides discussing the communications issues and communications chains in the event of problems in the future, Lawson said the coordinating council also discussed goals and deliverables.

“Those are just big, high-level pictures,” Lawson said.

“And then, who’s going to do the work, and how are we going to make sure that DHS has the support they need to stand up this coordinating council.”

“It was a logistical issue just being able to get everybody here because there wasn’t an official council at the time,” Lawson added later.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson originally made the critical infrastructure designation in the last days of the Obama administration. However, not long after, then-DHS Secretary John Kelly said the Trump administration had no plans to rescind the designation.

Apart from DHS, representatives from Election Assistance Commission were in attendance as well.

“State and local officials have already taken a number of steps to improve the security of the nation’s elections, and under the Government Coordinating Council we will be able to further leverage resources and our collective expertise,” said Bob Kolasky, the acting deputy under secretary of the DHS National Protections and Programs Directorate in a statement.

“The security of the nation’s elections are critical to our democracy, and DHS stands ready to support this important mission through exercises, information sharing, and technical cyber analysis and expertise.”

FBI Announces Results of Operation Cross Country XI

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Operation Cross Country XI

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Information warfare = Troll warfare

Russian journalists publish massive investigation into St. Petersburg troll factory’s U.S. operations