Sen. Mark Warner Says Russian Hacking Was “Much Broader Than Has Been Reported So Far”

Russian government attempts to hack into U.S. election infrastructure were “much broader” than what was laid out in a report Monday in The Intercept, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top-ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told USA Today in an interview Tuesday. 

Warner’s claim was made in response to newly disclosed findings by the National Security Agency that Russian operatives had hacked into an election software company and attempted to spear-phish at least 122 addresses associated with local election officials, with uncertain results.

“The extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far,” Warner said, referring to the report in The Intercept. “I don’t believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes,” he said, adding that he was pressuring intelligence agencies to declassify which states were hit, with the goal of helping them shore up their systems ahead of 2018 and 2020.

“None of these actions from the Russians stopped on Election Day,” he said. “I really want to press the case. This is not an attempt to embarrass any state. 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.”

On Monday afternoon, the Department of Justice announced that it had arrested a 25-year-old NSA contractor, Reality Leigh Winner, and charged her under the Espionage Act for leaking a highly classified document. U.S. officials have told media outlets that Winner was The Intercept’s source. The source provided the document anonymously and The Intercept has no independent knowledge of the source’s identity.

Top photo: Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., talks to reporters before a closed-door committee meeting in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, June 6, 2017, in Washington.