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Posted - January 8, 2024 at 10:55 PM
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@TuckerCarlson MUST WATCH: I always thought it was only a few FBI agents instigating January 6th… Wrong! There were at least 200 FBI agents inside the Capitol dressed as Trump supporters!!
@TuckerCarlson - Tucker Carlson
Ep. 61 This the smartest, best informed account of what actually happened on January 6th. https://t.co/U9yCWRVJSd
Video Transcript AI Summary
Three years after January 6, Rep. Clay Higgins says questions about a setup and that evidence "points to luring Americans to Washington into a trap." He cites a Homeland Security hearing clip: "Did the FBI have confidential human sources embedded within the January 6 protesters...?" Higgins asserts: "there were FBI assets dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6 prior to the doors being opened" and that "they waved those guys in." He says "a faction within the FBI and within our intelligence services" coordinated with "the most extreme liberal factions within a Democrat party" and that there were "well over 200" FBI assets. He calls for releasing "the j four, five, and six" "unredacted digital files" so the public can review "eighty thousand hours of digital evidence" and promises "criminal referrals." He closes: "Free speech is bigger than any one person or any one organization."
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: It has been exactly three years since January 6, the events of January 6. The racist insurrection that shocked this nation to its core more profoundly than anything since Pearl Harbor plus the civil war. And it has taken a while, honestly, even for people who aren't on the side of the professional liars to realize there's something amiss about what happened that day, not just the response, the largest law enforcement mobilization in the history of The United States. That was obviously disproportionate because it wasn't the worst riot that year, not even close. But the day itself, there was something about January 6 that didn't feel right, and hovering over that day has remained the question, to what extent was it a setup?
And we still don't really know. But what's interesting is how few people have asked that entirely legitimate question. One of the very few, really one of the only in the United States Congress, is a member called Clay Higgins from Louisiana. In case you haven't seen this clip, it's worth rewatching. This is from 2022 in a Homeland Security Committee hearing where he asked it just directly of the FBI director.
Watch.
Speaker 1: Did the FBI have confidential human sources embedded within the January 6 protesters and on 01/06/2021?
Speaker 2: Well, congressman, as I'm sure you can appreciate, I have to be very careful about what I can say about when
Speaker 1: Even now, because that's what you told us two years ago.
Speaker 2: May I finish? About when we do and do not and where we have and have not used confidential human sources. But to the extent that there's a suggestion, for example, that the FBI's confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6, that's categorically false.
Speaker 1: Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6 prior to the doors being opened?
Speaker 2: Again, I had to be very careful.
Speaker 1: It should be a no. Can you not tell the American people no? We did not have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters positioned inside the Capitol. Gentlemen, time has expired.
Speaker 2: You should not read anything into my decision not to share information
Speaker 1: Director Ray
Speaker 2: confidently here.
Speaker 1: Gentleman's time has expired.
Speaker 0: What a sleazy, repulsive, little authoritarian liar Chris Ray is. That's obvious when you watch that tape. The sad part is so few tapes like that exist because so few have confronted him directly and asked questions to which the entire country has a right to know the answer, like that one. Clay Higgins did that. Congressman from Louisiana Louisiana Lafayette joins us in studio.
Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Tuck.
Speaker 0: So that was over a year ago that you asked that question, which is a central question, and you asked it as I think is appropriate without any embarrassment at all on behalf of your constituents and the rest of the country. Are you any closer to the answer now?
Speaker 1: Well, we're closer to being in a position where we can reveal the answers that we already have. Much of the evidence that we have compiled from investigative effort over the the course of the last couple of years. Some officers like my own sort of operating in silos of investigative endeavor have now been able to come together now that we have a Republican majority and we have access to the to the to the staffs of the appropriate investigative committees. And so I sit on the oversight committee and we Republicans run that committee now, therefore, we control the staff. So when you can magnify the efforts that individual members of congress have have have pushed within our own offices, when you can magnify those efforts by the the skill and the numbers of staff from the committees, you you you get a lot of evidence reviewed professionally and aligned and assembled into essentially a case file.
And in in this case, this is a big file because the the the involvement of of certain actors, you could say deep state actors within the federal government to set the stage for what happened in in j four, five, and six and and to entrap thousands of Americans from across the country and to lure them into this this set stage on j four, five, and six. The people that were involved in that is is quite a large web. So, yes, sir. We do have a great deal of evidence compiled, and we're we're gradually, professionally rolling that evidence out. So you sort
Speaker 0: of answered the question right there in larger terms. You just said that elements within the federal government, I assume law enforcement intel and military, and I'm using your words, lured Americans to Washington into what you called a trap.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir.
Speaker 0: So that would I mean, that's a shocking and I assume that's
Speaker 1: a that's a sober conclusion based on the evidence. That's what you're saying? That's that would be my sober assessment as an investigator. And I'm you know, I'm quite a I love my country, and and I've I've always been a staunch defender of the thin blue line. And I I would proudly count the FBI amongst that number.
It's like brothers to me. So to find that level of of conspiratorial corruption at the highest levels of the FBI has been very troubling to me as a man, as a cop. And and yet, you know, you follow the evidence wherever it leads. And Yes. This is what investigators do.
So when I asked Christopher Wray that that question, for instance, I already knew the answer. I had reviewed compelling evidence that that FBI had assets, human assets, dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol prior to the doors being opened and the masses allowed in. So I I knew that the FBI was deeply involved. I'd seen evidence even at that time with that the FBI had embedded themselves into various groups online across the country of Americans who were essentially voicing their their concerns and airing their grievances with each other about COVID oppression. Those Americans were targeted by the FBI, almost universally, Republicans and and, largely Trump supporters, but the FBI worked undercover to infiltrate those conversations and become a significant part of those individual Americans' communications.
And when you dig into the evidence that we've we've had revealed through through some criminal cases that I've I've followed and worked with the families of j six political detainees and Americans that have been persecuted for their involvement in in the capital that day. And some of that evidence is shockingly reveals that the the the FBI agents that were operating undercover within the online groups across the country were were the first ones to plant the seeds of of suggestions of of a of a more radical occupation of the capital. And and they were sort of testing the waters of who amongst that group would would begin acknowledging that, you know, yeah, may maybe we should do that. Maybe we should plan for an occupation like that. But if you look at the the origins of those conversations, they they were started by the the FBI undercover guy that was operating inside the group.
And then months later, on January, many of those Americans met for the first time in person when they gathered for the massive rally where American patriots assembled to object to to everything that had happened during 2020, the COVID oppression, and the the stunning results of what we believe was a compromised election cycle in November 2020. So Americans gathered at their own capital to to appropriately air grievances and protest at their capital, but embedded amongst their number was an FBI asset that had been working from within their group online for many months. So this was the level of of manipulative effort that the FBI invested into American citizenry and our our assembly online to our and to exercise our rights under the First Amendment to talk to each other about whatever we wanna talk about, including the the the insidious oppressions of COVID that we were suffering across the country. So and our concerns about where the election was going, the whole mail in ballot thing, we can see the stage was being set for a compromised election cycle possibly. And to our horror, that's what happened.
So FBI had fingerprints on this thing from for many months prior to j four, five, and '6.
Speaker 0: I wanna go back to something you said in the first sentence, which is you have seen evidence, and that spurred your questions to Chris Wray, that there were FBI assets dressed as Trump supporters within the Capitol. So that is proof of entrapment because, of course, the federal government could have prevented entry into the Capitol Building. There aren't that many doors. You work there, you know. But they allowed people in on purpose to entrap them.
That's what
Speaker 1: that proves, think. Does it not? Well, it's certainly condemning. It's another piece of the of the strategy that the that the government employed to sort of complete the entrapment of Americans that they had had infiltrated and then prodded and provoked with online with the with the those original seeds planted of of actions like, you know, what type of gear to wear and and and just in in language that incited behavior that could go the wrong way. You know, pushing actions of of legal and legitimate peaceful protest to an edge where where those Americans would likely not have gone had they not been been, you know, encouraged by the FBI plant amongst their number that they didn't know was there.
So by the time it was actually j six and you had you had masses of Americans assembled outside the capital, They're almost, like, 99.9%, 100% peaceful. On the inside, you had FBI assets dressed as Trump supporters that knew their way around the Capitol. Before the doors even opened. Before the doors open. Or else, how are you gonna get around the Capitol?
You've been there many times. You need a guide to get from whatever door you go in. It's a labyrinth. It's it's a it's a maze inside there. So you that's right.
So there's no way just Americans, most of which had never been to the capital, there's no way they can come in some random door that gets opened and then get their way directly to the to the statuary or the house chamber or the Senate Chamber. It's just not possible. So the the the FBI assets that were dressed as Trump supporters that were inside the Capitol were there, I believe, and evidence indicates that they were there to to specifically wave in the the Trump supporters that had gathered outside the Capitol and the doors opened and they were allowed in, and on the inside were were, oh, there's some more Trump supporters, but really those were FBI assets, law enforcement assets that knew their way around the capital. And they they waved those guys in, said, come on. Follow us.
And they they are the ones that led them on the path directly. How do you think of guys never been to the capital gonna gonna come into the capital all amped up on on emotion and make his way straight to Nancy Pelosi's office. Come on. It's like I couldn't get it. There's no way.
I've been there for seven years. Could come in some random door at the Capitol and make my way to Nancy Pelosi. Unmarked.
Speaker 0: I mean, those leadership offices are unmarked. So how would
Speaker 1: you know? It's confusing to get around in the Capitol. Every American that has been there knows this. When you go on a tour, you bring your family to DC, you go through the Capitol, you have to have a guide. And and on January 6, the guides were FBI assets, the law enforcement assets, and they were dressed as Trump supporters.
They were positioned inside the capital prior to the doors being opened so that the Americans that had assembled outside the capital, once allowed in, could be brought directly to the areas where the FBI and the DOJ and the deep state actors knew would be the most the most sort of condemning criminal action of of Americans being a lot being inside the capital protesting without permit and things. They knew it was setting the stage for arrest and prosecution. It's such
Speaker 0: a crime. Who who planned this, do you think?
Speaker 1: I think factions planned this. I wouldn't say who, Tucker, because that yeah. I don't think there was one person chart that that planned this, but I believe the the faction of establishment liberals within the the FBI and the Democrat Party and our intelligence services to to another extent used their massive powers of surveillance and and and investigative assets that they have across the country, confidential informants, registered informants, nonregistered informants, voluntary informants. It's an it's a it's a a complex web of of FBI assets across the country that can be activated. So if you have authority at some of the highest levels in the FBI, doesn't take much.
The faction within the FBI and within our intelligence services that would coordinate with with the most extreme liberal factions within a Democrat party that were desperate to keep Trump out of office and and, you know, worked within the the theater of operations, shall we say, that had been that had been set by the COVID alleged medical emergencies nationwide and millions and millions of mail in ballots. There's no daylight between the the compromised election cycle of November 2020 and ultimately what happened on on on j six. So you ask who planned this? This would be the combination of several several of the most extreme liberal anti Trump, anti America first factions that that were in positions of authority within our our federal law enforcement organizations and the the Democrat party across the country.
Speaker 0: Can when you say that there were FBI assets in the crowd, it in the building beforehand and and certainly outside, what's the scale of this? Are you talking like ten, twenty? No.
Speaker 1: Based upon some very conservative, but, like, hard investigative effort evaluation of of the numbers from putting together eyewitnesses and and videos and and affidavit statement and whistleblower statements and court records that have been revealed through individual criminal cases where j six defendants have been prosecuted and smart attorneys have forced, admissions by the DOJ and the FBI, but those admissions have been sealed within the parameter of that criminal case by protective order by the judge so they I I can't share them, but I've seen them. So real hard objective and conservative estimates would would put the number of FBI assets in the crowd outside and working inside at at well over 200. 200? Yeah.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So you're in law enforcement? Yeah. Yeah. Before you came to congress in the military as well.
That seemed that's an extraordinary number. Is it? Well, no. When you think about the scope of the operation, if you were gonna do this, would need you would need that moment. To so like when, I don't know, Minneapolis burned down or when Saint John's, the Episcopal Church of Carceral in the White House in Lafayette Square was set ablaze and all the secret service agents were injured.
Were there 200 FBI assets in the crowd among Antifa then?
Speaker 1: I mean, I I don't know how many undercover agents FBI would have in a situation like that, but but but but j six was the was the was the final act prior to arrest and prosecution of of Americans that that were identified as as Trump supporters. I mean, the objective was to destroy the entire mega movement, to to forever stain the the patriotic fervor that was associated with with the America First mega movement that had won in 2016 and we believe won again in 2020. And the the establishment, on both sides of both major parties were determined to to smash that out of existence, not just by defeating Trump, but by destroying the the reputations of the movement itself, by creating this narrative that that was totally false, but but was heavily pushed that the that mega Republicans, American First Republicans are somehow a danger to our republic and a a domestic terror threat. There's a whole another story about what the FBI has done to tagging Americans as suspected domestic terrorists and and following us as we travel across the country. But the the bottom line is that 200 as a I I believe is a conservative number.
Personally, I think there were there were many more. But a number that I'm comfortable going on record with is that we believe that there were that there were easily 200 FBI undercover assets operating in the crowd, outside the capital, embedded into groups that entered the capital or provoked entry of the capital and working with FBI assets that would have included metro police and capital police that would dress as Trump supporters inside the capital because those were the guys that knew their way around the cap. So given the scope of the operation and the number of of doors where entry was allowed or even encouraged, than the and the number of people that were actually outside the capital and it entered, we believe 200 is a conservative number. Yes, sir.
Speaker 0: It's it's shocking what you're saying. It confirms everyone's worst suspicions about this. It's clearly true. Did you come across any evidence that the the DOD, the military, either Defense Intelligence Agency or National Guard or any part of the US military played any role in this at all?
Speaker 1: I have not seen that. I've heard the echoes of that suspicion, and I have I have observed circumstantial evidence that that has been presented to me that I've that I have reviewed. But to but to me, it does not rise to the level that I would call actionable from an investigative perspective. So there's some there was some some suspicion, but in in in law enforcement, the thresholds you're looking across is reasonable suspicion that would prompt a a criminal investigation. And then the next threshold is probable cause, which you need for arrest.
And then, of course, in our system, finally, the last threshold is is, is conviction and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So then I I did review evidence, Tucker, regarding some suspicions of military involvement in some way. But and I and I've I have reviewed some of that evidence that that has been that I've been able to get my hands on. And I do not think that the the military was was involved, not at the level, most certainly not at the level of the of the FBI and, over the course of all of 2020. And then on j four, five, and six, the FBI working in coordination with other law enforcement assets that that they roped into the operation
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: From Metro PD, from DC, and and the Capitol Police was sort of
Speaker 0: sort of tricked into participating with the with what the FBI had been staging for, you know, ten months. It just I mean, if you take three steps back, this is not democracy. So the federal agencies serve under the oversight of the elected president and then on under the oversight of the elected congress. Their elected people get to make the decisions. You have a republican president, you now have a republican congress, and neither one can get a straight answer from the FBI.
No one has any control of the FBI. You're describing a government within a government.
Speaker 1: Well, in America, a question becomes reasonable men would would would ask when we face a crisis like this, who investigates the investigators? Right. And the answer in America is is congress. So we we have the responsibility to investigate through the appropriate committees, which would we're certainly we're certainly doing that now that we have a Republican majority in control of the committees, but we don't have the power to arrest. We can we can give criminal referrals based upon our investigative efforts, but we have to have a DOJ that's receptive to the criminal referrals.
So we we've hit quite a a brick wall, have we not? Constitutionally, we we have the responsibility to investigate objectively, and and and anyone that knows me know that's exactly what I'm I'm pursuing. I do not have I'm not trying to create a crime to fit a narrative to blame on the FBI. I'm following the evidence, and and to my horror, it implicates our FBI at the highest level and a and a a conspiracy within our government at the highest level to create the the to set the stage for a compromised election cycle in 2020, and then the the the actions that took place on j four, five, and and six, and then the the criminal investigation, arrest, and prosecution of Americans that they were able to entrap and document with the thousands of cameras that were operating that day and use that evidence that they knew they were setting up to investigate, arrest, and prosecute the Americans that they had entrapped. So congress can investigate these things, and we and we are, and we will reveal these horrific truths, and we will have criminal referrals.
But until you have a a a a president running the executive branch that will clean house at the DOJ and FBI at the highest levels and put American patriots in place that will be that will act upon the criminal referrals that that congress provides, then none of those guys are gonna get arrested because they're not gonna arrest themselves, and we don't have arrest authority.
Speaker 0: I'm a little and don't expect you to be critical of your colleagues in the Republican conference, but I mean, they do control the house. Impeachment is a thing. Chris Wray is still the FBI director. I watched Republicans, some of whom I know, cheer the murder of Ashley Babbitt, was an unarmed woman, less than five five, by Michael Bird. They were Michael Bird's side.
And it I have to say for a lot of Republican voters, I count myself among them, very clarifying. If you're cheering Ashley Babbitt's murder shooting women now, that's okay because she likes Trump? And the Republicans were like, yeah. Was happy. Like, lot of them thought that.
What the hell?
Speaker 1: Yeah. That was and it it made me sick. Me too. You know, I'm there's a a great responsibility when you when you wear a badge in America. I mean, think about it.
To be to be the to be the designated servant of your community that has that has the the authority to to deny the freedom of a fellow American in the land of the free. Like, that's a heavy responsibility. So the the escalation of of force is must be appropriate in order to affect a lawful arrest. And and a a bad a bad shoot is the worst thing that an officer can possibly be involved in in his in his career. It's it's, you know, we it's it's it's the thing of nightmares for for good police officers.
So to take what was would from a law enforcement perspective was clearly a bad shoot because there's some basic rules you just cannot violate. You have to attempt to effect an arrest before you can go to deadly force. There was there was no attempt to arrest Ashley Babbitt. There were there were officers on the other side of the window she was climbing through. There were officers on the interior side of the window she was climbing through.
There was no indication they had been they'd this had been going on for an hour, and there was there was no reports on the radio anywhere else of of gunfights. So there was no reason at that point to expect that Ashley Babbitt or anybody else in the in the crowd was gonna produce a firearm and start firing on police officers. Why? Because it had not happened. So that's part of the totality of circumstance that a police officer is responsible for knowing.
We stay in constant communication with our radios. We know what's going on. That officer that that that pulled that trigger would shot a a American woman who was clearly in a in, like, a physically compromised position climbing through the broken glass of a of a window is not you know, it's not like she just stepped into the cage at MMA, and she was ready to fight. She's climbing through a window draped in a flag. There's police officers on the other side of the window.
There's police officers on the interior side of the window. So you have plenty enough officer presence. If you wanna arrest that woman, then by all means, pull her through the window, you know, put flex cuffs on her and throw her in the corner. We'll get to you later, ma'am. We're kinda busy right now.
That's what you do. You'd grab that woman and pull her through, flex cuffed her and threw her in the corner, or handed her back to somebody that could pull her back, you know, from that front line right there. So I understand that very well understand officers have to make split second decisions, but you never you never make a decision to use lethal force unless it's absolutely called for and required if you're losing a fight attempting to effect an arrest, then then, yeah, you know, if the if if there's if if the officer's life is in danger and is all by himself, but there's never should be a circumstance where you just pull the trigger on a woman climbing through a window that's clearly unarmed. There's no evidence of gunplay from the crowd that she's coming from. You got officers on both side of where she is.
If you gotta arrest her, then by all means, arrest her. You know, to put flex cuffs on her and and move on. So, you know, she'd nail the next person trying to come through the window, but she don't shoot her. So that was bad
Speaker 0: there's an invest a real investigation. Cheered. Yep. Why do you
Speaker 1: think that was? And there's this in there's this insanity that has taken hold in the in the the minds and hearts of many otherwise reasonable American citizens where they did they they hate Trump so much. Like, they're they're so deeply embedded and they're they've sold their souls to the establishment that when we had an America first president and and he and he'd, like, stopped the, the military industrial complex forward momentum, and and he and he began restoring power to individual members of congress and restoring individual rights and freedoms and sovereignty of the state. And he took away the actions of the cartels and and and brought this, this real common sense approach to the executive branch and was leading our country in that beautiful direction. This was interfering with the business model of the establishment.
So many career politicians on both sides of the aisle, and I, you know, I don't like those guys, man. I'm not one of them. And I I serve my country in congress, but I I don't consider myself a politician by any means. I'm a servant to we, the people. Some of these guys, man, they pop out of the womb to be to be politicians.
They get groomed their whole life, you know, to be a a career politician. And those are the ones that had this instinctive cheer for something really bad happening to a Trump supporter. You know, they their true color showed in that moment and was an ugly color. Yeah. That's it.
We shouldn't be shooting women, number one. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 0: So where where does this go from here? You have this corpus of information. It sounds like definitive. When does the public see the detail, and what's the process after that?
Speaker 1: It's a good question. So evidence from criminal investigations by nature was rather secretive. But there is a, a tremendous compilation of data that I think should be made completely available to the public, and that's the digital files from from j four, five, and six. This is where speaker Mike Johnson can be a champion for for that will be remembered for throughout history as the speaker of the house that fully released unredacted digital files from j four, five, and six completely to the American people. And they within that data, then is full truth.
And and the American people, it is the only staff large enough to, you know, frame by frame, go through eighty thousand hours of digital evidence. Nobody has a staff big enough to do that, but we can crowdsource it to the American people. So you ask when will this evidence be released? I'd I've I've been encouraging speaker Johnson as I did speaker McCarthy to, by god, man, release this data to the American people.
Speaker 0: Why won't why won't they?
Speaker 1: I believe speaker Johnson will, but but Mike is a is is quite a skilled constitutionalist attorney himself, and he's a very measured, patient, faithful man. So I I have I extend trust to to speaker Johnson when he says that it's his intention to fully release the the called the j six tapes, but, really, it's digital evidence is more than it's more than just video evidence. It's it's a lot. It's, you know, radio transcripts, the whole thing. I believe my speaker Johnson knows that this is a significant duty that he must he he he must perform for the American people.
It's a moment in history where where, you know, I believe our lord and savior has placed him in that in that position of service to the country, and he has a responsibility to to fully release that data. And then the American people will see for themselves what some of us have already learned to our horror to be true. Congressman Higgins, thank you very much.
Speaker 0: Free speech is bigger than any one person or any one organization. Societies are defined by what they will not permit. What we're watching is the total inversion of virtue.
Posted - October 28, 2023 at 10:29 AM
Saved - October 28, 2023 at 6:19 PM
@CallahanAutoCo - Big Tom Callahan🇺🇸
@mtaibbi https://t.co/SqHUhfuYxw
@CallahanAutoCo - Big Tom Callahan🇺🇸
This is a 21 minute video of Democrats blaming electronic voting machines for losing the 2016 and 2018 elections 😆 https://t.co/oCoVyycYvP
Video Transcript AI Summary
Virginia has stopped using touchscreen computer voting due to vulnerabilities, and there is concern about the security of voting machines across the country. Researchers have demonstrated that these machines can be easily tampered with, and hackers with limited resources can breach them in minutes. Instances of electronic voting machines deleting or switching votes have been reported. The biggest seller of voting machines has violated cybersecurity principles by installing remote access software, making the machines susceptible to fraud and hacking. Additionally, many states have outdated and vulnerable machines, and some lack backup paper ballots. The use of modems in voting machines also poses a risk, as they can be connected to the internet and hacked. The overall consensus is that the current voting systems are insecure and vulnerable to manipulation.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Virginia just stopped using touchscreen computer voting because it's so vulnerable. We need to look at all the voting machines. Every secretary of state needs to be, you know, assisted in making sure that they are not being, hacked and and attacked.
Speaker 1: I continue to think that our voting machines are too vulnerable.
Speaker 2: Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that ballot recording machines and other voting systems are susceptible to tampering.
Speaker 3: Even hackers with limited prior knowledge, Tools and resources are able to breach voting machines in a matter of minutes.
Speaker 4: In 2018, electronic voting machines in Georgia and Texas deleted votes for certain candidates or switch votes from 1 candidate to another.
Speaker 2: The biggest seller of voting machines is doing something that violates Cybersecurity 101 directing that you install remote access software which would make a machine like that, you know, a magnet for fraudsters and hackers. These voting machines Can be hacked quite easily.
Speaker 5: You could easily hack into them. It makes it seem like all these states are doing Different things, but in fact, 3 companies are controlling this.
Speaker 0: It is the individual voting machines that some pose that pose some of the greatest risk.
Speaker 6: There are a lot of states that are dealing with antiquated machines, right, which are vulnerable to being hacked.
Speaker 7: Workers were able to easily We hacked into an electronic voting machine.
Speaker 2: It was possible to switch votes. 43% of American voters use voting machines That researchers have found have serious security flaws, including backdoors.
Speaker 8: We know how vulnerable now our systems were. We know, I know the Hackathon that took place last year, where virtually every machine was broken into fairly quickly.
Speaker 5: I actually held a demonstration for my colleagues here at the Capitol, where we brought in, folks who before our eyes hacked election machines. Those that are not those that are being used in many states.
Speaker 3: Aging systems also frequently rely on unsupported software Like Windows XP in 2000, which may not receive regular security patches and are thus more vulnerable to the latest methods of cyber attack.
Speaker 7: In a close presidential election, they just need to hack 1 swing state or maybe 1 or 2 or maybe just a few counties in one I'm
Speaker 9: very concerned that you could have a hack that finally went through. You have 21 states that were hacked into. They didn't find out about it for a year. Right now, we have over a dozen dozen states that either don't have any backup paper ballots or only have them partially. You think that our adversaries don't know what those states are?
Of course, they know what those states are. And if we have a close election In the general election, in a presidential race, and one state's out withstanding and their ballot boxes gets hacked into, their elections get hacked into, We will have absolutely no backup.
Speaker 8: I know America's voting machines are vulnerable because my colleagues and I have hacked them repeatedly. We've created attacks that can spread from machine to machine like a computer virus and silently change election outcomes. And in every single case, we've found ways for attackers to sabotage machines and to steal votes. Across the country, there are about 50 Two different models of machines. They fall into essentially 2 styles, ones that scan a piece of paper or ones where the vote, the voter just interacts with the touch screen and many of them have been analyzed now by researchers Looking for security vulnerabilities.
In every single case where a US voting Machine has been analyzed by by competent security researchers. They have found vulnerabilities that would let someone inject malicious software And change election data every single case.
Speaker 10: The better or the more efficient way of hacking machines would be to subvert them all through the machine that's used to actually Program those machines. So prior to each election, the county election office or the voting machine vendor will actually program memory cards For that election, it tells the machine who are the candidates, what are the, you know, the contests being decided, and that gets inserted Into the voting machine. If you can alter, if you can subvert that machine that is used to program those memory cards, then you can pass, rogue software to the voting machines.
Speaker 8: Voting Chains are not connected to the internet. This is something that you hear all the time in the US from election officials. Unfortunately, it's not actually true. In many new voting machines Come with, 4 gs wireless modems so that they can be connected to the internet from the polling place in order to upload the results faster. Now to me that sounds crazy.
Why would you want to put your voting machines on the internet right in the middle of the election potentially at the most vulnerable time?
Speaker 11: Studies conducted in 2007 by the state of California, state of Ohio, state of Florida found security vulnerabilities that could take advantage of these To engineer viruses where 1 compromised voting machine could then infect eventually the entire fleet of machines for an entire county. Typically at the end of the election day you move a memory card through each of the machines in the precinct and that's to collect the vote totals. That process can spread a virus. And there are other processes. The details vary from machine to machine.
Speaker 2: When you say hacked, what were they able to do once they gained access to the machines?
Speaker 1: All sorts of things. They could manipulate the outcome Of the vote, they could manipulate the tally, they could delete the tally, and and they could compromise the vote in any number of ways.
Speaker 12: The machines used in Georgia Have been demonstrated to be hackable through a virus that's carried on ballot definition cartridges. Very much like this Duxnet virus was, Inserted into, nuclear centrifuges in Iran.
Speaker 1: There are a number of states that outsource their reporting of elections to third parties, some of which are corporations based in other countries Trees like Spain. So you've got to trust that the aggregation of the votes and the reporting of the votes is is, is accurate as well.
Speaker 8: I'm Pretty sure my undergrad computer security class at Michigan could have changed the outcome of the 2016 Michigan election if we wanted to. It is that bad. And we have a combination of very powerful adversaries and unfortunately quite vulnerable and obsolete systems. That's that's why I say it's only a matter of time.
Speaker 13: Unfortunately, in a lot of these systems, the audit trails are just as vulnerable as the other aspects of the system. So there may not be Good forensic evidence of a successful, intrusion. With the current design, we cannot be universally confident that it hasn't happened. And it's probably only a matter of time before it will.
Speaker 3: In at least 40 states, elections are carried out using machines They're at least a decade old. And like any technology, they're susceptible to increasing failure with age. Some state officials Have had to turn to eBay to find critical components like dot matrix printers, decades old storage devices and analog modems. Aging systems also frequently rely on unsupported software like Windows XP in 2000, which may not receive regular security patches And are thus more vulnerable to the latest methods of cyber attack.
Speaker 4: In 2016, state election websites in Illinois and Arizona were hacked by intruders who installed malware and downloaded sensitive voter information.
Speaker 6: It is worth fighting for integrity in our election system, which means that they are free From interference by a hostile or an unfriendly nation. Let's put the resources into upgrading the state's election systems. Because what we know is this. There are a lot of states that are dealing with antiquated machines, right, which are vulnerable to being hacked.
Speaker 5: I sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and Senate Homeland Security Committee and we receive all kinds of information about the vulnerabilities to our national We are vulnerable in terms of foreign interference with our elections. It's my understanding that some of the election system vendors have Acquired states to sign agreements, that prevent or inhibit independent security testing. There's a saying that I'm sure many of you have heard, which is the Do you know the difference between being hacked and not being hacked? Is knowing you've been hacked.
Speaker 0: And they are still looking for ways to steal information about voter registration, for example. There are some tech experts in Silicon Valley Valley with whom I have met who say that, you know, maybe what they'll do this Next time is to really disrupt the actual election. Shut down the servers that you send results to. Interfere with the operation of voting machines because still too many of them are linked to the Internet. So there we are still very vulnerable.
Speaker 14: I mean, I can tell you in Virginia, when I was governor, I had to replace all the machines. Because I remember when I first voted, when I went to Richmond, moved down as governor, I remember I kept voting in the senate race, kept voting for the democrat, republican name kept coming up. Three times that happened.
Speaker 15: What do you mean kept coming up?
Speaker 14: So I you know, we had the touch screens. I was voting for Mark Warner, our senator, and Ed Goswami's name would light up. Happened to me 3 times. Finally, the 4th time, Mark Damon, I quickly hit vote and I got out of there. You know, all the cameras are looking at me like this guy doesn't know how to vote.
I mean, what's going on? So then I had an investigation done and listen to this. I brought in some technology experts. They were able to hack into our machines from off-site in about 5 or 6 minutes. And within 4 minutes, they were able to change a vote.
IDD certified all the machines. Now in Virginia, we have paper ballots.
Speaker 2: 43% Of American voters use voting machines that researchers have found have serious security flaws, Including backdoors. These companies are accountable to no one. They won't answer basic Questions about their cybersecurity practices and the biggest companies won't answer any questions at all. 5 states have no paper trail, and that means there is no way to prove the numbers The voting machines put out are legitimate. So much for cybersecurity One zero one.
The vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide Use election management systems that run on old software that is soon gonna be out of date And write for exploitation by hackers according to an exhaustive analysis By
Speaker 0: the Associated
Speaker 2: Press, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Arizona, and North Carolina, among others, are all at risk. Even the state of Georgia, which just passed legislation to buy new voting machines, is on track To buy equipment that suffers from this significant cybersecurity weakness. Let's say the election Is decided by a small percentage. And people in America Don't think that the election was fair. The effect that would have on our 200 year Experiment in self governance.
Our democratic system would take a real hit. Our elections weren't secure last week, and they sure as heck aren't secure this week. And anybody who says otherwise is either selling the voting machines or simply has a malicious Intent towards our elections. At one point in the Intelligence Committee, Both sides seem to agree that no votes were changed in the 2016 election. And I said, the experts I talk to say that until you have a Forensic analysis of a vote until you go in there and scrub the whole system.
You can't really say that.
Speaker 16: These machines don't have a capability of providing you forensic evidence To see if they cannot prove they were honest, they cannot prove that they were have been hacked. They simply don't have the Fundamental basic capabilities of providing you that forensic evidence, that data. Only way you can see That, that machine was hacked. If the attacker wanted to be, they found that it was hacked. That's a sad truth.
So anyone who says, I have information one way or another. That's an opinion. That's not tactics. Practice, it can be done without leaving trace. When you know how the systems work, Looking for the evidence, you know that you won't find it because the systems are not recording, generating, Preserving or protecting meaningful forensic evidence.
And this is from the very beginning to the end of the process everywhere. These systems really don't have a capability of recording and protecting any meaningful audit information or forensically important information. So a lot of times I would also argue that even if you try to take a look into the evidence, the problem is that there is no
Speaker 17: We've heard a lot from voting machine vendors and election officials that voting machines Can't be hacked because they're not connected to the internet. All of those vulnerabilities that Andrew talked about, are not a problem because no one can access the machines And it turns out that that message that they've been giving us for years and particularly after the 2016 election Just isn't true. Voting machine vendors have sold election officials on these in use of modems. In some case, the modems are embedded inside the voting machines. In other case, they're external modems that get attached to the voting machine at the end of the election.
So at the end of the election, the machine goes Into shutdown mode and then this option pops up about modoming results. And so the system will automatically then dial in and send these votes over a cellular modem to a server on the Internet that collects the results. So everyone will tell you and they've told me every time I've spoken with them that cellular modems are not really internet connectivity. They will say, That doesn't mean that the machine is connected to the internet. It's using a cellular modem.
Well, that's not true and Election Systems and Software, which is The top voting machine maker in the country, this is one of their statements over and over again with the public but this is one of their own diagrams that they They gave to Rhode Island in 2015. And if you see that circular part in the center there showing that that modem transmission using the wireless modem, They sit there, right there. It's on their own diagram that is going over the internet.
Speaker 8: Before every election, election officials have to program the voting machines With who's on the ballot and what are the rules for counting? Well, they make that election programming on a PC workstation somewhere either at the, at the jurisdiction or at an outside vendor that does it for them. If an attacker can break into that work Station which is called an election management system. They can spread malicious code to all of the memory cards used to program all of the voting machines in the jurisdiction And those election management system workstations sometimes are connected to the internet or the data that's programmed into them passes Through an internet connected system. So we're just 1 or 2 hops away from an online attacker.
So if I wanted to break into this company, let's say I was the attacker, I'd Probably start by forging an email from, let's say, Larry, the president here, to Sue, his administrative assistant, Asking her to urgently open an attachment. Now, of course, when she does, that attachment has my malware in it. I have a, foothold into their network And I can try to spread from there to the election management system and to the voting machines in most of the state. Pampering with the national election result in my country It's easier than well easier than even I thought in 2016. I keep learning things that convince me that the situation is scarier than, than even Fertz had thought, You identify the states that are most weakly protected and going to be close.
Target the computers that are going to program voting machines there, spread malware to machines to change a fraction of the votes And then rely on the fact that most states even if they have a paper record are not going to rigorously use it to check that the computers are right. But the fact is that in close national contests in the US, the result really only hinges on the result in a small number of States. You've heard about the swing states in any given election. The ones that are, really competitive. In such a situation an attacker can, before the election, identify which states are likely to be close.
Try probing all of them In the way that the Russians did the voter registration systems in 2016 and just find the weakest swing states and attack there. So in this way, the American system converts, diversity of implementation Into basically this patchwork of strength and weakness that gives attackers a menu of possible places to strike. It makes us weaker in close elections.
Speaker 18: Modems in voting machines are a bad idea. Those modems are network connections. And that leaves them vulnerable to hacking by anybody who can connect To that network.
Speaker 19: ES and S insists while there are 14,000 of its modems in use, there are firewalls separating those modems from the public Internet.
Speaker 18: Once the hackers starts talking to the voting machine through the modem, they can hack the software in the voting machine And make it cheat in future elections.
Speaker 20: What is the vehicle for the transmission from the ICP? Is it cellular modem versus VPN?
Speaker 15: Well, it is a cellular modem that
Speaker 8: the can be configured in a VPN. Right? And we currently in Chicago and Cook County, we work with Verizon to, Secure that network. What wireless chipset slash modem does the hardware have? We support a variety.
So, it's really up to the jurisdictions what technology they wanna use, what's compatible with their with their networks.
Speaker 15: Currently, in some jurisdictions, we're using, basically, a modem that is a three d modem, GSM, but we can support multiple Variety support and protection.
Speaker 8: Including including latest four gs standards.
Speaker 20: So the answers to the next question is the three gs or four gs. Verizon 8 tier Do you're Sprint consuming all?
Speaker 16: Oh, yeah. All all networks. Right.
Speaker 8: Discuss quite a bit. Yeah. I mean, we actually transmit from the ICP in Mongolia as well. So, we're not committed in networks.
Speaker 15: And in Puerto Rico, there's 3 vendors because the island is not covered by any by any of the vendors With this, we use 3 different cellular vendors for some ICPs. With this vendor, Claro, ATMC, and T Mobile, I might say, in the different parts
Speaker 16: More modern voting machines, they actually have a mobile phone modem. In to speak, they have a they have mobile phone our mobile phone connectivity to county headquarters, they are sending the results.
Speaker 1: Some jurisdictions are relying on uploading election To results using cellular modems or, the Internet that of course introduces another point of vulnerability, not just to the data that's flowing, But also it's the software, the devices that, that are being connected.
Speaker 10: Many of these voting machines have modems embedded into them. And the modems are to transmit the vote totals on election night to the county, elections office. So these modems contact, they're cellular modems and they Contact the cellular network, to contact the cell tower. So the cell tower traffic these days in our modern times actually goes through Internet. It goes through the same Kinds of routers and switches not the regular internet traffic comes to but also, in between that cell tower and that voting machine, an intruder Can, intercept data going to the cell tower and intercept that that communication, that phone call.
If you can trick a voting machine into, contacting In your device your fake cellular tower instead of a legitimate tower you can actually use that connection to get back into the voting machine and get back into the tabulator, and then alter votes and software.
Speaker 8: So just to review, you look at the polls before the election and figure out which states were likely to be close. Probe all of them. Find the ones with the weakest protection. Then hack into the, election management systems there or at the outside vendors the states use. Once you hack into the election management system, can spread malicious code to individual voting machines and have your code say swap 10% of the votes in the places you infected.