WASHINGTON (CN) - On the heels of a server breach last year that proved catastrophic, the Democratic National Committee rejected the government’s offer to help, former Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson testified Wednesday.
Speaking this morning before the House Intelligence Committee, Johnson said he inquired, as soon as he became aware of the hacking, about whether his staff were proactively helping the DNC identify the culprits and plug the cybersecurity holes.
"The answer, to the best of my recollection, was not reassuring," Johnson’s written testimony says. "The FBI and DNC had been in contact with each other months before about the intrusion, and the DNC did not feel it needed DHS's assistance at that time."
Johnson said he was "not pleased" about Homeland Security’s exclusion from the DNC’s response.
CrowdStrike, the private security firm hired by the DNC, eventually attributed the breach to Russian actors — a conclusion now supported by 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.
Johnson, who served as the Homeland Security chief from December 2013 to January 2017 under President Barack Obama, reiterated that conclusion on Wednesday.
"In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of [President] Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election, plain and simple," Johnson said.
Though Johnson declined to say in a public setting how the intelligence community reached that conclusion, he said the intelligence made it “a pretty clear case."
"Perhaps beyond a reasonable doubt," he added.
Democratic lawmakers pressed Johnson this morning on what he knew about Russian attacks on the 2016 election, and when.
As the summer progressed, Johnson recalled that his concerns about a cyberattack on the election grew. At this point, he said engaged state election officials to offer cybersecurity assistance for the upcoming election. He toyed then with the idea of declaring election systems as critical infrastructure but says he met pushback from secretaries of state and other state election officials.
"Those who expressed negative views stated that running elections in this country was the sovereign and exclusive responsibility of the states, and they did not want federal intrusion, a federal takeover, or federal regulation of that process," Johnson's testimony states.
Johnson said their concerns suggested a "profound misunderstanding" of what the designation would mean, which he said he tried to clarify.
But he ultimately decided to wait until January to make the designation, calculating that it would be a counterproductive to do it before then. Instead, he encouraged states to get cybersecurity help from Homeland Security to protect the integrity of the election.
Johnson counted 33 states and 36 cities and counties as having made use of Homeland Security tools to scan for potential vulnerabilities.