FBI to investigate

Reid asks FBI to investigate Russian election tampering

By Nick Gass

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants the FBI to look into evidence that Russia is behind a series of recent intrusions into the United States' voting systems, concerned that the Kremlin is trying to exert its influence over the results in favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

"I have recently become concerned that the threat of the Russian government tampering in our presidential election is more extensive than widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results," Reid wrote in a letter to FBI Director James Comey dated Aug. 27 first reported by the New York Times.

Reid, noting that former CIA chief Michael Morell has previously called Trump an "unwitting agent" of Russian President Vladimir Putin, called the "prospect of a hostile government actively seeking to undermine our free and fair elections" something that "represents one of the gravest threats to our democracy" since the Cold War.

Yahoo News reported on Monday that the FBI had earlier this month alerted breaches of two states' voter registration systems, Illinois and Arizona, successfully exporting data from one state's system and breaking into the other one.

Reid also drew attention to the "consensus of national security experts" who have concluded that Russia is behind the hacking of the systems of several Democratic organizations, including the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

"It is of vital public interest to understand the chain of custody of these illegally obtained documents from the time they were stolen to the time of public dissemination, including any evidence of complicit intermediaries between the Russian government, those who leaked the material and any United States citizen," Reid wrote, suggesting that the FBI should take a close look at Trump campaign officials with ties to the Russian government.