In November 2016, 139 million Americans cast their votes in the wake of a massive Russian cyber-enabled operation to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

The Kremlin spread disinformation through hundreds of thousands of social media posts. Russian agents hacked U.S. political organizations and selectively exposed sensitive information. Russia targeted voting systems in at least 21 states, seeking to infiltrate the networks of voting equipment vendors, political parties and at least one local election board.

Had Russian hackers succeeded, voters could have shown up on election day to find their names missing from the voting rolls, ensuring chaos that could have undermined faith in the fairness of our elections.

A serious threat

This brazen attack by Russia exposed serious national security vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. Yet despite this threat, the Trump administration and Republican leadership in Congress have simply refused — for more than a year — to pursue the facts and defend our democracy.

Watch: Intelligence Officials Aware of Russian Activity Aimed at 2018 Elections