By Sen. Ron Johnson via The Daily Caller News Foundation | October 04, 2024
I entered the Senate SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) Sept. 25 to attend an “All Members Classified Briefing on Foreign Threats to U.S. Elections.” I was a little late and arrived during the presentation of Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence. Her presentation was followed by FBI Director Christopher Wray and CISA Director Jen Easterly. As Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee, quoting Yogi Berra, later described the briefing, “It was deja vu all over again.”
With straight faces, these directors of federal intelligence and law enforcement were once again warning the U.S. Senate that foreign actors were trying to influence our election. Well, duh! Unfortunately, most of my Senate colleagues seemed to be lapping it up and taking the briefing seriously. After a few minutes of listening to Director Haines, I could only shake my head in disgust.
I fully acknowledge that foreign threats are real and serious, but we are well aware they exist and have been persistent for decades. Except for maybe a few specific details, I heard nothing new, and certainly nothing that should be considered or kept classified. And I heard absolutely nothing about the most egregious examples of election interference in our lifetime, or the most significant threats to the integrity of the 2024 election.
I was the last senator given the opportunity to ask a question. By this time, there were only four senators left in the briefing. I began my questioning by pointing out that the most egregious act of election interference in our lifetime was the letter solicited by current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, engineered by former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morrell and fast tracked by then-CIA Director Gina Haspel. That letter was written Oct. 19, 2020, less than a month before the November election.
A bipartisan group of former U.S. intelligence officials signed the letter, which stated, without evidence, that the Hunter Biden laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Keep in mind, the FBI had seized Hunter’s laptop almost a year earlier and knew full well it was authentic. In the small world and circles of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement, it is inconceivable that those intelligence officials were unaware or unable to ascertain that fact.
That letter itself was a “U.S. intelligence information operation.” And it worked exceedingly well. Because of that letter, the Hunter Biden laptop story was effectively suppressed as Russian disinformation, and Joe Biden became president. Subsequent polls show that had the public known about the laptop, Joe Biden would have lost the election. Election interference doesn’t get more egregious or effective than that.
After making that point, I asked who within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence directed the unsolicited August 2020 FBI briefing given separately to Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and me. That briefing, about us being targets of Russian disinformation, also provided no new information and was later leaked to the Washington Post to smear me, thereby interfering in my 2022 reelection. Four years after the briefing, and our relentless efforts to find out who directed it, we still have not been told. I didn’t get the answer Wednesday either.
Next, I asked Director Wray what the FBI was doing to investigate smurfing. This clear violation of campaign finance law was first revealed in March 2023 by investigative journalist, James O’Keefe. Using ActBlue, the Democrats’ donation platform, thousands of low-dollar donations are attributed to individuals allegedly without their knowledge — in one instance 5,776 donations totaling $754,124. Director Wray seemed clueless on the issue, and had no idea if the FBI was doing anything to investigate it.
At that point, the Democrat senator who chaired the briefing, concluded it. I wasn’t able to ask about my greatest concern regarding the 2024 election — illegal immigrants registering and voting in it. Don’t be under the illusion that just because noncitizens are ineligible to vote, Democrats aren’t willing to overlook that legal technicality to win an election. We already have plenty of evidence that illegal immigrants are registering, sometimes without their knowledge. Ohio just purged 499 illegal immigrants from its voter rolls following a multi-phase audit. Boston officials disclosed that 70 illegal aliens contacted county election officials asking to be removed from voter registration lists. Virginia recently cancelled 6,303 noncitizen voter registrations. Oregon “mistakenly registered nearly 1,260 possible noncitizens to vote,” its DMV admits.
President Biden threw open the borders and directed federal departments to register voters. Does anyone believe that registration effort will be non-partisan, or that some percentage of the millions of illegal immigrants won’t vote in November? Based on last Wednesday’s briefing, I’m confident federal law enforcement won’t have any interest in investigating those crimes either.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
Ron Johnson is a Republican senator from Wisconsin.
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