White House security adviser: ‘Nothing’ foreign adversaries ‘can do to change your vote or to stop you from voting’
White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday that there is “nothing” foreign adversaries “can do to change your vote or stop you from voting.”
O’Brien told CBS’s “Face The Nation” that the “best way” for voters to “defeat our foreign adversaries” is to “get out and vote.”
{mosads}“What I think all of these countries are trying to do is … to sow discord among Americans and trying to create chaos,” he said. “And they’re doing it in whatever way they can.”
CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked O’Brien if Russian hackers could gain access to U.S. election systems to change votes or make it harder for people to vote.
“No, they can’t do either of those things,” he said. “And we got ahold of them early on because we got great cyber folks and we put a sock to it.”
“But there’s nothing they can do to change your vote or to stop you from voting,” he added.
The administration earlier this week warned of operations by both Iran and Russia. A number of voters in Florida and Alaska received threatening emails from senders who said they were associated with a far right extremist group. The administration said Iran was behind the emails.
O’Brien also highlighted that 95 percent of ballots across the country have paper auditing trails, making it “very hard” for foreign adversaries to interfere with the ballots. Brennan pointed out that about seven states do not have that auditing trail.
NEWS: After the @FBI announced this week that foreign adversaries accessed U.S. election systems, @margbrennan asks @WHNSC adviser @RobertCOBrien if #Russia can make it harder to vote *OR* change a vote.
O’Brien says “no” in both cases.
“They can’t do either of those things” pic.twitter.com/G0hoUXHwvh
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 25, 2020
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The national security adviser’s comments come slightly more than a week from Election Day, in an election expected to have a record number of early voters and mail-in voters due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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