On September 25th, I entered the Senate SCIF (Secret Compartmented Intelligence Facility) to attend the “All Members of Congress Confidential Briefing on Foreign Threats to U.S. Elections”. I arrived a little late, during a presentation by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. Her presentation was followed by FBI Director Christopher Wray and CISA Director Jen Easterly. Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee later said of the press conference, “It was déjà vu all over again,” quoting Yogi Berra.
These federal intelligence and law enforcement leaders were once again warning the U.S. Senate with a straight face that foreign actors were trying to influence our elections. Well, of course! Unfortunately, most of his colleagues in the Senate acquiesced and appeared to take the press conference seriously. After listening to Coach Haynes talk for a few minutes, all I could do was shake my head in disgust.
I fully acknowledge that foreign threats are real and serious, but we know full well that they exist and have been for decades. I didn’t hear anything new, except perhaps some specific details, and certainly nothing that should be considered or kept secret. And we hear nothing about the most egregious example of election interference in our lifetimes or the most serious threat to the integrity of the 2024 election.
I was the last member of Congress given the opportunity to ask questions. At this point, only four senators remained in the meeting. I believe that the most egregious act of election interference in our lifetimes was in a letter requested by current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, engineered by former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell, and swiftly followed up by then-CIA Director Gina Haspel. I started my question by pointing out something. The letter was written on October 19, 2020, less than a month until the November election.
A bipartisan group of former U.S. intelligence officials signed the letter, which states without evidence that Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.” It was stated. Remember, the FBI had seized Hunter’s laptop almost a year ago and knew full well it was real. In the small world of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement, it is inconceivable that those intelligence officials did not know or could not confirm that fact.
The letter itself was a “U.S. intelligence operation.” And it worked very well. Thanks to that letter, the Hunter Biden laptop issue was effectively covered up as Russian disinformation and Joe Biden became president. Subsequent polls showed that Joe Biden would have lost the election if the public had known about the laptop. Election interference has never been more egregious or effective.
After making that point, I asked who in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence directed separate ex parte FBI briefings with Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and me in August 2020. That press conference about us being a target of Russian disinformation also provided no new information and was later leaked to the Washington Post to smear me and thereby interfere with my 2022 re-election. I decided to do it. Four years have passed since the briefing, and despite our constant efforts to find out who gave the instructions, it still hasn’t been revealed. No answers were available Wednesday either.
Next, I asked Director Wray what the FBI was doing to investigate smurfing. This clear violation of campaign finance laws was first revealed in March 2023 by investigative journalist James O’Keefe. Thousands of low-value donations were allegedly attributed to individuals without their knowledge using Democratic Party donation platform ActBlue, with one instance resulting in 5,776 donations totaling $754,124. are. Director Wray seemed ignorant about the issue and did not know if the FBI was doing anything to investigate the matter.
At that point, the Democratic senator who chaired the briefing concluded: I didn’t get to hear my biggest concern about the 2024 election: illegal immigrant registration and voting. Don’t be under any illusions that just because noncitizens aren’t eligible to vote, Democrats aren’t going to ignore that legal technicality to win elections. There is already ample evidence that illegal immigrants are registering, sometimes without their knowledge. Ohio just removed 499 illegal immigrants from its voter rolls after a multi-stage audit. Boston officials said 70 illegal aliens contacted county election officials to be removed from voter registration lists. Virginia recently canceled the voter registrations of 6,303 noncitizens. The DMV acknowledged that Oregon “erroneously registered nearly 1,260 noncitizen voters.”
President Biden has opened borders and directed federal officials to register voters. Does anyone believe that registration efforts will be bipartisan, or that some percentage of the millions of illegal immigrants will not vote in November? Based on last Wednesday’s press conference, I am confident that federal law enforcement has no interest in investigating these crimes either.
Ron Johnson is a Republican senator from Wisconsin.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
