August 10, 2026 - Transcript

***Geoff Bennett:***

*This afternoon, CISA, the federal agency tasked with protecting the cybersecurity of the nation's critical infrastructure, to include voting equipment, held a conference call with state election officials to discuss the upcoming midterm elections.*

*Despite President Trump's claims about the risk of foreign hackers targeting U.S. voting systems, this was one of CISA's first broad outreach efforts to state election officials, and that's with Election Day just 85 days away.*

*Our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, joins us now with more.*

*So, Liz, we should say for the unfamiliar CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. They had this conference call. You have been reporting on this all day. What happened?*

***Liz Landers:***

*I spoke with three sources who were on the call, lasted about an hour, and this was hosted by the National Association of Secretaries of State.*

*And it included these two CISA officials. The acting director of CISA, Nick Andersen, primarily spoke, I'm told, and also Jim Harrell, who's the head of integrated operations, was also on the call as well. And one source that was on the call said that they really appreciated the National Association of Secretaries of State and the administration talking with election officials on this call, but that it is 85 days away, as you mentioned, from Election Day at this point, and that election officials have already made plans to fill in the gaps that they see CISA has left behind.*

*I'm told that there were a number of topics that were covered on this call and that CISA committed to providing physical and cybersecurity assessments upon request, which is standard, that CISA also talked about the workflow and recommended that election officials work through regional directors, which is also something that has been in place in past election cycles.*

*CISA did acknowledge, the officials on the call acknowledged outside foreign actors who are trying to influence the elections here, but did not talk about specifics. And, Geoff, we have known and reported on in the past that Iran, Russia, and China have tried to influence the last several cycles of American elections here.*

*There was also some talk on this call about voter registration systems, which is -- as one source pointed out to me, was, in particular, of interest to them because that is something that the president has talked about a number of times recently.*

***Geoff Bennett:***

*And how did those state election officials react?*

***Liz Landers:***

*I'm told that several secretaries of state asked questions on this call, and one of the more pointed questions and heated exchanges was about comments from the DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin.*

*That is the agency that oversees CISA, of course. And he made comments just a few weeks ago threatening to prosecute election officials if they didn't cooperate with the Trump administration. And one of these election officials on the call said, why should we trust working with you all as an agency when your boss says that he wants to jail us?*

*Another secretary apparently made a comment that the briefing felt more like security theater than actually helping these election officials. And I'm told that another secretary also asked about some specific assistance that CISA could offer, like tabletop exercises, penetration testing, and intelligence briefings, and that some of the officials on the call felt like the response to that was kind of noncommittal.*

*Like, will they get that in time for the November elections? It wasn't really clear. I think the most concise thing that I heard from a separate source on the call was that they said that the agency was sort of covering their butts with this.*

***Geoff Bennett:***

*So, remind us, what is CISA's role in an election year typically?*

***Liz Landers:***

*CISA traditionally has a broad role in securing both the cyber and physical infrastructure across many agencies in the government, including water systems, which is something that has been in the news recently, with those being hacked in several states, and they also secure election systems.*

*And their election role, as defined on their own Web sites, is that they're supposed to share threat information, they're supposed to deploy sensors to detect malicious activity. They're supposed to foster robust processes for coordination across the federal, local, state partners there.*

*But the Trump administration has gutted this election security apparatus in the last few years. CISA has lost about a third of its work force in the second Trump administration, and other agencies have also lost their election security specialized work force, including the national -- the director of national intelligence gutted the Foreign Malign Influence Center.*

*And also the FBI has downsized their election security work. Geoff, of course, we are going into an election cycle that the president has talked about constantly. So we will see if CISA is able to provide more support to these states.*

***Geoff Bennett:***

*Liz Landers, thank you for this reporting.*

***Liz Landers:***

*Of course*

State Voting Officials Join CISA Election Cybersecurity Call with Election 85 Days Away | PBS NewsHour