(credit: Tom Lohdan)
At an event today hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, White House terrorism and homeland security advisor Lisa Monaco announced that President Barack Obama had ordered a “full review” of the campaign of cyber-attacks against the Democratic Party, the campaign organization of Hillary Clinton, and other politicians and state election officials’ websites during the 2016 presidential campaign. Monaco said that the results of the review would be released to Congress before President Obama left office.
“The president has directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process,” Monaco said, “and to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of stakeholders, to include the Congress.”
The announcement comes after a call from both Republicans and Democrats on December 7. At a Heritage Foundation event on Wednesday, House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, (R-Texas) called for “consequences” for Russia’s interference in the election. “If we don’t respond and show them that there are consequences,” he said, “the bad behavior will continue… our democracy itself is being targeted.”