Robert Mueller and the nation’s top intelligence official say Russia is trying to interfere in the midterm elections — but Republican and Democratic lawmakers say the Trump administration is keeping them in the dark about whether the U.S. is ready.

A half-dozen senior House and Senate lawmakers who spoke to POLITICO say they’re hearing only an alarming silence from the administration about what Moscow’s trolls and hackers are up to, less than five months before an election that could undo the Republican lock on Congress and derail President Donald Trump’s agenda.


They’re also getting conflicting messages: Mueller and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats have both asserted that Russian efforts to undermine the American political system are underway, without offering any public evidence or specifics. Meanwhile, officials from the Department of Homeland Security say they haven’t detected any specific Russian attacks on U.S. voting machines or databases this year.

“We’re getting so many mixed signals, depending on what the agency is,” said Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is planning to convene a summit next month with intelligence officials. “It compels us to bring everybody together in the same room and try to figure out whether or not there’s some stovepipe issues.”

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, expressed even more frustration.

“What we would normally see in a normal administration is the principals meeting to discuss what are they doing individually, what are they doing jointly, or what they are communicating amongst themselves, what’s the whole of government plan to protect the midterms,” Schiff told POLITICO. “I just don’t see any evidence that’s happening.”

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Lawmakers from both parties expressed concern that DHS and the intelligence community haven’t learned from their missteps in 2016, when they failed to share information about evidence of Russian operations with other federal officials, the private sector or state election agencies. Afterward, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an extensive influence operation to undermine the election, with the eventual aim of helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton.

The lawmakers also questioning whether the agencies are equipped or being active enough in trying to prevent a repeat this year.

DHS is “doing a lot” on election security, Burr said, but “from a standpoint of Russian meddling, the jury is out whether we’re detecting Russian activities and, if so, to what degree and what they’re targeted towards.”

In the House, Democrats on the Intelligence Committee have petitioned for a detailed, classified briefing on the threats posed by Moscow.

However, that request has “gotten some pushback” from the intelligence community, Schiff said. He said officials had argued that Coats, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and FBI Director Chris Wray, had already given an all-hands briefing to House members last month.

“That isn’t sufficient,” Schiff said.

The government has made election security a new priority ahead of the midterms and the 2020 presidential elections. That includes DHS’ efforts to work more closely with states on safeguarding voting systems and monitoring for attempts to tamper with election infrastructure, such as voter registration databases and connected IT systems.

The federal Election Assistance Commission has set aside $380 million to help states make security improvements at the polls, and many states are investing their own money in election system upgrades.

Authorities have said that Russia-linked hackers scanned at least 21 states’ election computer systems before the 2016 election, although they don’t believe the intruders altered any actual votes. That’s in addition to what Mueller’s office and the U.S. intelligence community have called a massive disinformation campaign that Russia wages on social media to sow divisions surrounding the election — as well as the hacking and theft of documents from Clinton’s campaign and various Democratic Party organizations.

Agency chiefs across the U.S. national security apparatus have publicly testified that they fully expect Russia to make another attempt on the country’s election systems. But specific details have been scarce.

At a recent meeting in France co-hosted by the Washington think tank the Atlantic Council, Coats was dire in his warnings about Moscow’s intentions but vague on specifics. “It is 2018, and we continue to see Russian targeting of American society in ways that could affect our midterm elections,” he said.

An ODNI spokesman declined to comment further on Coats’ remarks.

Days later, Mueller said in court filings related to the 2016 Russian influence investigation that “uncharged individuals and entities” are attempting to sway the country’s politics and elections. In the motion to block those charged in that case from getting access to evidence, Mueller’s team wrote that “public or unauthorized disclosure of this case’s discovery would result in the release of information that would assist foreign intelligence services, particularly those of the Russian Federation, and other foreign actors in future operations against the United States.”

Mueller’s investigators also have evidence that efforts are ongoing “to engage in interference operations like those charged in the present indictment,” the court documents said.

But DHS officials — who play the federal lead role in securing the country’s critical infrastructure, including elections — say they haven’t detected any meddling.

The department has not seen any evidence of “specific Russian targeting of election systems,” Matt Masterson, a senior cybersecurity adviser in DHS’ Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, told The Washington Post earlier this month.

Masterson told reporters last week that he was “talking very specifically about the targeting of election systems,” while intelligence heads like Coats are referring to high-level influence operations.

DHS’ narrow focus only further compounds congressional worries that agencies aren’t on the same page, particularly if Moscow launches another multifaceted effort as it did in 2016.

“It’s confusing to have two agencies have diametrically different opinions,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Intelligence Committee.

He added that he hasn’t been “impressed by DHS’ attention to this issue,” noting it took the agency until the end of 2017 to notify the 21 states that Russian hackers had scanned their election systems during the presidential campaign. The issue popped up again this past week when former President Barack Obama’s cyber chief, Michael Daniel, told senators it was “highly likely” all 50 states had been scrutinized.

“I don’t think they’ve adequately responded to this threat,” King said.

The lack of concrete examples has left lawmakers to their own imaginations, with some zeroing in on reports about Russian trolls on Twitter. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that despite efforts by Twitter to crack down on troll accounts, many remain active, tweeting on subjects like Roseanne Barr and Donald Trump Jr.

More people should be paying attention to this. https://t.co/YnyGwU5not — Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) June 20, 2018

Former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told the Senate Intelligence Committee this past week that “we’re already seeing some of the moves on the Russian side.”

“There’s obviously the electoral target,” she said. “But over the course of 2017 and 2018, they’ve had great success turbocharging their efforts to divide the U.S. on race, on issues of gun control, on any of the seams that stretch us. … I think they will accelerate that,” she said.

Still, Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said the communication from the Trump administration may have the unintended consequence of exaggerating the threat.

“Part of the problem in terms of anybody speaking for the administration on the whole election interference issue is, it has been blown so out of proportion,” he said, casting doubt on the idea that anyone could truly affect election outcomes. “This is not the greatest threat to our democracy in history as we hear people on the other side. It’s a threat. It’s one that we need to take seriously.”

As lawmakers press for more information, state election officials told the Senate Rules Committee they are doing what they can to upgrade their systems against any potential digital attacks. But they worry the $380 million doled out earlier this year isn’t enough.

“I would respectfully request those in Congress consider some ongoing way to provide resources,” said Steve Simon, Minnesota’s secretary of state.

Tim Starks contributed reporting to this report.