【2022 Archives】

022 ArchivesSenate Intelligence Committee vice chairman has made it very clear that Russian attacks on the U.S. election system were even more pervasive than leaked National Security Agency documents published by The Intercept revealed.

Sen. Mark Warner, from Virginia, the top democrat on the committee, told USA TODAYTuesday that the "the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far."

So that's comforting.

TheIntercept published Monday a top secret report that showed how Russian military intelligence officials targeted U.S. elections and used "phishing" emails to infiltrate local government organizations ahead of the presidential election.

In a move that sounds straight out of House of Cards, the report suggests that the GRU, or the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, attacked an elections software and hardware company right before the election.

But Warner said on Tuesday that the report -- allegedly leaked by NSA contractor Reality Leigh Winner, who was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of sending the classified documents to the media -- is just the tip of the iceberg.

He did, however, add, "I don't believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes."

Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Warner warned about ongoing Russian interference. "None of these actions from the Russians stopped on Election Day," he added.

"This is not an attempt to embarrass any state" affected, Warner said. "This is a case to make sure that the American public writ large realizes that if we don’t get ahead of this, this same kind of intervention could take place in 2018 and definitely will take place in 2020."

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