Biden Administration To Issue Bulletin About Threats To Election Infrastructure

Politico reports, Biden admin set to warn about threats to nation’s election infrastructure:

Top Biden national security officials are tracking multiple threats to the nation’s election security infrastructure ahead of the midterms and are set to issue warnings, including in an internal intelligence bulletin this week, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The bulletin will lay out details of cyber threats posed by China and Russia, as well as other non-state actors, and [domestic] potential physical threats to election officials in jurisdictions across the country, the people said. The warnings come as the midterm elections near and amid increasing reports of intimidation at ballot drop boxes. The people requested anonymity to talk freely about sensitive national security and election matters.

Elsewhere on Monday, the Department of Justice addressed several malign influence schemes and alleged criminal activity by non-state actors. While those charges were unrelated to the intelligence bulletin warning, FBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledged during a press conference that foreign governments continue to pose a major threat to U.S. elections.

“Malign foreign influence — whether it’s from the Chinese government, the Russian government or other governments — is not just an election-cycle issue, but a 365-day-a-year problem,” Wray said.

The internal administration concerns about election threats come days after a call was held between federal officials and local law enforcement personnel about the midterms, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Those on the call discussed the potential for violence in response to the spread of false narratives regarding the election process. Officials said election workers, including those working at polling stations, are likely to face threats and harassment from extrements both online and offline, the person familiar with the matter said.

“We are now hearing reports of people surrounding ballot drop boxes, some even wearing tactical gear, and questioning people,” said John Cohen, the former counterterrorism chief at DHS. “Are the police prepared for that? They need to be. All of this is being driven by the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.”

Already, there have been incidents of armed individuals in tactical gear showing up at ballot drop boxes in Arizona, prompting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to be called into the area.

More: Arizona sheriff steps up security around ballot drop boxes:

The sheriff of Maricopa County said Monday he’s stepped up security around ballot drop boxes after a series of incidents involving people keeping watch on the boxes and taking video of voters after they were apparently inspired by lies about the 2020 election.

On Friday, deputies responded when two masked people carrying guns and wearing bulletproof vests showed up at a drop box in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb. The secretary of state said her office has received six cases of potential voter intimidation to the state attorney general and the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as a threatening email sent to the state elections director.

People watching the boxes and voters showing up to vote have covered their license plates, according to photos shared on social media.

“Every day I’m dedicating a considerable amount of resources just to give people confidence that they can cast a vote safely, and that is absurd,” Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone said during a news conference. Penzone said his office has referred two incidents to county prosecutors for potential criminal charges.

* * *

“Uninformed vigilantes outside Maricopa County’s drop boxes are not increasing election integrity,” Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder, and Bill Gates, chairman of the county board of supervisors, said in a joint statement over the weekend. “Instead they are leading to voter intimidation complaints.”

Richer and Gates are both Republicans.

* * *

Penzone, the sheriff, implored people to respect everyone’s right to vote and leave it to law enforcement officers to investigate suspected violations of the law. He said the intense focus on securing elections has pulled resources away from investigating crimes.

“But we’ll come and we’ll babysit polling sites because people have to misbehave if that’s what we have to do to protect democracy,” said Penzone, a Democrat.

Cyber threats to America’s election infrastructure have long been a concern of government officials. Indeed, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the intelligence community have been monitoring such threats to the midterms for months. But officials recently said foreign adversaries have not been actively targeting the election system. [They don’t need to because pro-Putin Republicans are doing it for them.]

“At this time, we are not aware of any specific or credible threats to compromise or disrupt election infrastructure,” CISA Director Jen Easterly told reporters on Oct. 13. [Two weeks ago.]

Even so, Easterly said, this year’s combination of misinformation, harassment of election workers and insider threats from rogue election administrators makes the current threat environment “more complex than it has ever been.”

CISA did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials consider misinformation and disinformation the biggest threats to the midterms, given how easy it would be for malicious actors — whether domestic partisans or foreign intelligence operatives — to seize on delayed results or isolated voting-machine glitches to spread lies about the security of the process.

Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone may be doing his job, but don’t expect some of Arizona’s other county sheriffs, who are aligned with the Oath Keeepers and MAGA/QAnon election deniers, to do their job.

The Arizona Mirror reports, Arizona ‘ground zero’ for extremist, anti-government sheriff movement:

Wearing a badge on his belt and gun on his hip, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb’s tone was different from the warm greeting he’d given Susan Wortman before the meeting. He was “acting like a bully,” she said. He didn’t seem happy about her public comments, and he certainly didn’t appreciate her attire.

Wortman had stepped up to the podium with her hair pushing out from under the wide brim of her late husband’s official sheriff posse hat, and the sleeves of his posse polo shirt stretching past her elbows. She spoke out against what she viewed as a sheriff who had become a threat to the community. She was among a half-dozen county residents that day who raised similar concerns about Lamb’s continued election fraud claims, fear-mongering and intimidation during public meetings.

“Mark Lamb, in my opinion, has politicized his job too far, and has been focused more about power issues,” she said to the public body. “He seems to be selective about which laws he’s enforcing.”

Lamb is on the frontline of what domestic extremism experts warn is a troubling marriage between anti-democratic extremist groups and county sheriffs throughout the nation. The so-called “constitutional sheriff” movement threatens to radicalize sheriffs by indoctrinating them with its false legal theories about the sheriffs’ unconstrained power and a duty to nullify laws they deem unconstitutional.

While the movement saw unprecedented traction during the pandemic as some sheriffs said they would not enforce COVID-19 restrictions, its recent shift into amplifying debunked claims of widespread election fraud has experts most concerned.

“It puts law enforcement in the crosshairs. It also puts their legitimacy in the crosshairs,” said Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, an organization that tracks and counters racism, antisemitism, white supremacy and far-right movements.

“When you get ‘constitutional sheriffs’ who are picking and choosing what they’re going to enforce,” Burghart said, it means “their legitimacy and the Constitution itself is being shredded by their positions.”

Arizona, experts warn, is “ground zero” for the movement.

More than half of Arizona’s 15 county sheriffs have aligned themselves with at least some of the primary ideologies of the constitutional sheriffs, a months-long investigation by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting found. Four have direct connections to Protect America Now or the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA)—both labeled as anti-government extremist organizations by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks domestic extremism. They are described as far-right nationalist and anti-democratic organizations by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights.

AZCIR reviewed postings, comments and threads on social media platforms, public statements and documents, and conducted dozens of interviews to identify Arizona sheriffs who are either directly or ideologically affiliated with the movement. AZCIR then compared its findings with criteria established by national experts and researchers on domestic extremism to verify affiliations.

Arizona members of these groups hold powerful leadership positions in a variety of other law enforcement organizations, including the Arizona Sheriffs Association, Western States’ Sheriff Association and Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, AZCIR found.

CSPOA was founded in 2011 by Richard Mack, a previous board member with the Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia group, and former Graham County, Arizona, sheriff. He has a well-documented history of sharing the stage with known white supremacists, antisemites and sovereign citizens. Mack continues to associate with the Oath Keepers, appearing at their events and providing a platform to founder Steward Rhodes—currently on trial for seditious conspiracy—despite saying he left the group about 7 years ago. He has also vehemently defended the reputation of CSPOA speaker Michael Peroutka, a former member of the neo-confederate, white nationalist group League of the South.

Protect America Now burst onto the scene in 2020 as Arizona and other states grappled with responses to the pandemic and some sheriffs, including Lamb, pushed back on public health mandates. Experts say the organization, conceptualized by Lamb but incorporated by long-time Republican strategist Nathan Sproul, is a repackaging of CSPOA ideology.

“It’s honed off the rough edges and could potentially have an appeal to a larger number of sheriffs and to the public,” Burghart said.

“That was our biggest concern, that in essence, it was mainstreaming the same ideas that CSPOA had but was doing so with much more conscious branding and public-facing appeal.”

Mack told AZCIR that there is nearly no ideological difference between the two organizations. He claimed that “most of the members” of Protect America Now had participated in CSPOA events.

Lamb—cowboy hat, gun and tactical vest included—is a regular on mainstream and fringe media outlets, discussing national-level issues from border policies and gun control to COVID-19 and elections.

“People deem me as political,” Lamb said, “I like to say that I’m just responding to issues that (the Biden administration) and other people are making political.”

Lamb has thrown his charismatic power behind other election deniers in the upcoming Arizona elections, including gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. Endorsed by former President Donald Trump, these candidates have said they would have done more to prevent Joe Biden from taking office. Both have shown support of debunked allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The growth of the constitutional sheriff movement is concerning, Burghart said, because it is turning these sheriffs into the “enforcement arm of the far right.”

“It’s also provided legitimacy to these rampant conspiracies around elections, around the pandemic, around many other other subjects,” he said.

There is much more in this report, Arizona ‘ground zero’ for extremist, anti-government sheriff movement.

More:

“It really seems like we’ve got a movement of rogue sheriffs aligning with the movement that is continuing to double down on the false, fraudulent election theory and continuing to spread disinformation about it.”

story by @i_simonelli/@ArizCIR https://t.co/jncOI2iUjc

— Arizona Mirror (@ArizonaMirror) October 24, 2022