The NPR Politics Podcast - House Republicans Hacked + Voter Fraud Allegations In North Carolina

Episode Date: December 5, 2018

The National Republican Congressional Committee says it was hacked during the 2018 midterms. What happened and is it anything like the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee? Also, Democrats are alleging fraud in North Carolina's ninth congressional district. This episode: political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, justice reporter Ryan Lucas, political reporter Miles Parks and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Ty, currently waiting at the In-N-Out drive-thru on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. This podcast was recorded at 3.33 p.m. on December 4th, the best day of the year. Things may have changed by the time I make it to the window. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it is the NPR Politics Podcast. None of us we have established in this studio have ever had an In-N-Out burger. Oh no, I've had one. I just don't remember it. Oh my God, I'm going to get so many tweets.

R.I.P. Miles' mentions. All right. The National Republican Congressional Committee said today that it was hacked during the 2018 midterms. And Democrats are alleging electoral fraud in a race that has been reopened in North Carolina. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And before we get started, we have to say it's a momentous day. Happy birthday to Danielle. Happy birthday, Danielle. I heard it's also the birthday of some other notables.

Jay-Z, Tyra Banks, Jeff Bridges, Fred Armisen. It's a good day to be born. All right, so let's start with the newest news first today from the National Republican Congressional Committee, who we learned today had their emails hacked during the 2018 midterms. Ryan, let's start with you. Give us the basics. What are they saying happened? So the National Republican Congressional Committee says that, yes, it was the victim

of a cyber attack. It says it doesn't know at this point who is behind this. It just says an unknown entity. It also says that as soon as it found out about this, as soon as it learned of it, it launched an internal investigation. It also contacted the FBI. It says that the FBI is now conducting an investigation. I contacted the FBI today. They declined to comment, which is par for the course. They don't talk about whether they have or do not have an investigation ongoing. Right. And we should insert here, if you don't know what the National Republican Congressional Committee is, or NRCC for short, it is the campaign arm that helps House Republicans get elected. So maybe let's talk next. OK, so this group of people

that tries to elect Republicans, their top officials had their emails hacked. I mean, how big is this? Do we know how many emails, how many people, how long it went on? A source familiar with the investigation tells me that the hackers accessed email accounts of four senior NRCC aides. The breach was detected in April, but I'm told that the hackers had actually been in the system for a couple of months beforeides. The breach was detected in April, but I'm told that the hackers had actually been in the system for a couple of months before that. The other thing that I was told is that the hackers were described to me as being very sophisticated. That's based on their tactics, their methods. That could point to a foreign government being behind this, but at this point,

that's not clear, and we just don't know. So I don't think I'm the only person in the room who's thinking this kind of sounds familiar to two years ago. Did law enforcement say anything about comparing this to 2016 or how does this, in your eyes, compare to what happened in 2016? And if you don't remember what happened in 2016, of course, the Democratic National Committee was hacked. The U.S. government says it was by Russia. And all of those emails were posted to WikiLeaks, which the U.S. government says was basically in cahoots with Russia to publish that information. So, yes, there are most definitely parallels. But they are not the same thing. And there are important distinctions to be made here. So, as Domenico mentioned, in the case of 2016, the emails that were taken were weaponized and they were published, they were released by WikiLeaks, which in some way, shape or form had

an impact on the 2016 election. In this case, with the NRCC emails, there's no indication at this point that the emails were made public. That is an important distinction to be made. And then the second one is that in the case of 2016, the US government came out and said that hackers aligned with the Russian government were behind that. And at this point, with this hack with the NRCC, we don't know who was behind it. You know, the thing is, with this, this is certainly not going to be the last kernel that we see in this story. You know, all indications were that the NRCC had kept this quiet for some time that they knew about it. And there's a reason for that. There's a huge political risk in potentially either emails

going out, as Ryan points out, or even people internally wind up finding out that their information has been compromised, that somebody might have some dirt on them. Maybe a lawmaker said something potentially problematic about any number of people in the administration, you could see in a year when Republicans didn't do very well, losing 40 seats in the House, that this kind of thing, losing this kind of information would be a real big potential political risk. And is the ultimate end to this to what to have Americans cast doubt on their democracy to weaken faith in our democracy? Do we even know the ultimate goals here? Or did we in 2016?

Well, I do think it's interesting that when we talk about cybersecurity when it comes to elections, we've spent, Ryan, you and I have been covering this issue almost exclusively for the better part of the last year and a half. And when November came around, there hasn't really been a huge payoff to all of this talk about cybersecurity around the election. We've talked a lot about election administration in Florida and North Carolina. But I think what this data point does show

is that A, there are still vulnerabilities in the system and B, that 2016 was not a one-off thing. This is going to be a continuous effort going forward and a continuous part, huge part of how campaigns are run and how election administration is run. Cybersecurity is now a huge tenant of that. And remember, in 2016, when Donald Trump was gloating about the Democratic National Committee being hacked, and while his campaign staffers were gloating, talking about how they just don't quite get security, Marco Rubio was warning the senator from Florida that this could happen to Republicans too, and to maybe, you know, pump the brakes on some of that. Well, and the RNC, according to

officials, was targeted during the 2016 campaign. We never saw anything come out of that. U.S. intelligence officials have made clear that this is not a Republican Democratic thing. This is in the case of 2016. You had foreign actors going after both sides. All right, Brad, we're going to let you go. Thank you so much for untangling this for us. My pleasure. And we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're headed to North Carolina, where a House race still has not been called after voter irregularities have piled up. We will be right back. And we're back. Let's head to North Carolina, where the results of a House race in the state's 9th district are still up in the air. Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready in this race by 905 votes,

which is less than half of a percentage point. So Miles Parks is going to break a lot of this down for us. Miles. I'm going to try. Yes. So, Miles, what are they saying? What are Democrats in the state saying is happening here? So Democrats are alleging election fraud, plain and simple. OK, so the North Carolina Board of Elections has declined to certify this race so far, and they're investigating election fraud. It centers around this guy, Leslie McRae Dallas, who is a local, I know that's an amazing name. He's a local political operative in North Carolina. And there was an expansive piece that really looked at his role in all this in the Washington Post yesterday. He allegedly had a

group of people go sign up voters to get absentee ballots, and then they would return to those houses and request those absentee ballots, and then they would return to those houses and request those absentee ballots. Sometimes, according to signed affidavits and voters who've also spoken to NPR member stations, they then requested those ballots to be returned without them sometimes being fully filled out. And this guy had some ties to the Republican candidate who is ahead right now, Mark Harris. He did. He was being paid by a contracting firm in North Carolina. Harris's campaign did know of his behavior, but they have said specifically that their understanding of his role in this campaign was that everything that he did was legal. What we're talking about here, though, going to people's houses, knocking on doors, either pressuring them on who to vote for

or even taking their ballots and returning them. North Carolina law says that either a voter or a near relative has to return that ballot. It cannot be an independent third party. Right. And so to be clear here, someone could have come to my door if I lived in this district, took my absentee ballot and potentially some of these people are alleging filled it out for me.

They could have filled it out if if they returned it unsealed. Maybe you filled it out and you gave it to this person unsealed. If you wanted to have a role in manipulating the election, you wouldn't need to change that vote. All you would need to do is circle a second person and that would make it an invalid vote for that race. Or maybe you said you were going to turn in the ballot and you didn't. And so toss it in the garbage. Exactly. Which is the huge other part of this story is that the numbers bear out that something weird was happening in this district. All right. So let's talk about that.

It's not just that people are coming forward and saying someone weird came and took my ballot. Like there are numbers that came out that seem kind of anomalous, right? There are. And the biggest one that I keep focusing on is in this county, Bladen County. OK, 19 percent of the absentee vote by mail ballots that were returned and accepted were by registered Republicans. Nineteen percent. Mark Harris won 61 percent of the votes by vote by mail ballots in Bladen County. Mark Harris being the Republican. Being the Republican.

So for that to have happened, I've talked to some political scientists. He would have had to win every single unaffiliated voter in the vote by mail race, as well as every single registered Republican, as well as some Democrats to get to that 61 percent threshold. That's really an amazing thing. I mean, and the fact is we're talking about potentially a lot of votes. There's a very small margin here, but all of that might not even matter. Right. Because if something was done that was illegal during the campaign, what would they do?

I mean, if they found that to be true, would they automatically call for a revote potentially or what? Well, it is there. We're pretty far away, I think, at this point from a new election being called. That being said, it is a possibility. There could be a do over. There could theoretically be a do over in North Carolina statutes. And I just want to read this one section of the statutes. A new election can be called if, quote, irregularities or improprieties occurred to such an extent that they taint the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness. There is no mention there of, oh, as long as enough votes here, which is a key Republican talking point over the last two weeks. Republicans have been saying basically there might have been

issues. We want the investigation to continue, But you should certify this race because Mark Harris won by enough votes that this election fraud thing, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. That statute you just read, it gets at something very important about any election, which is that people have to have faith that the election actually happened fairly, right? That the person who's representing you is representing you fair and square. And this is very different than what we hear from President Trump and Republicans. Remember, President Trump set up a voter fraud commission that wound up, you know, kind of falling apart. And but you don't see him tweeting about the North Carolina 9th Congressional District. And you would think if somebody was interested in really fairness about an election,

it wouldn't be something partisan. I think that distinction right there is one of the most important parts of the story. Republicans and President Trump specifically have been talking a lot about election fraud, but only in-person day of election fraud. Right. Voter fraud. Voter fraud. This is not exactly absentee ballot fraud is the only form of election fraud that experts say actually does happen. People are still looking for a really good way to stop it. Clearly, we could go on for hours, but we're going to cut that off there because before we wrap, we have yet another state to cover, the great state of Wisconsin, where there's more political fallout. The sitting governor, Scott Walker, who is leaving after eight years, he was just voted

out. He lost his reelection bid to Democrat Tony Evers in the midterm, but that is not stopping him and the Republican-controlled state legislature from trying to pass new policies. Domenico, you have been watching this closely. Give us the rundown. What's going on? Yeah. And, you know, Wisconsin is not a state that's immune from protests. You're kidding. It's the kind of state that's had a lot of this, right? Right. We had a lot of people at the state capitol, about a thousand people protesting what Republicans are trying to do, which is pass a lot of legislation through that would curtail powers of the incoming Democratic administration because Democrats were

able to defeat Scott Walker. They have a new governor, Democrats, and a new attorney general. And that's potentially a lot of power. But Republicans are trying to insulate themselves for a lot of the things that Scott Walker had done over the last eight years. Can you tell us like a couple of the bigger things that they're trying to change to curtail Tony Evers' power when he comes in? Well, so one of the things is they want to limit early voting to two weeks. Now, that's something that wound up in the courts two years ago. A federal judge ruled that unconstitutional, but they passed that along with a whole bunch of other measures out of committee at midnight last night and may take that up later today or tomorrow. They would limit the governor's ability to write some state rules, flexibility when it comes to public benefits.

And when it comes to lawsuits, you know, the states always go into court and they are, you know, suing over, let's say, the Affordable Care Act, for example. Right. There's the potential that they would essentially limit the attorney general's ability to fight these cases. This legislation would actually get rid of the solicitor general's office, which usually handles high profile cases. I'm just curious for both you guys. Danielle, you mentioned this a little while ago when we were talking about it. Is partisanship making it so everything that's not nailed down is just fair game? I'm thinking about the nuclear option with Gorsuch is the first thing that comes to mind for me. That was when the Republicans changed the rules to basically only need 51 votes to confirm a Supreme Court nominee instead of that 60 vote threshold from where it was before. That was earlier in 2017. But I'm just curious from your guys'

perspective. Well, there are plenty of things that are just established norms in our politics. You got that with the vote on Supreme Court justices. Yeah, that seemed to be eroding away. If it is not set in stone in law, there is always the potential for some party, for some person who is enterprising enough, who wants administration that's coming in, all women, by the way, and for the first time in 28 years, all Democrats. So you have a new governor, a new attorney general, a new secretary of state, and the House of Representatives and the Senate have gotten involved to essentially curtail some of their powers as well. And that's something that we saw in North Carolina back when the new Democratic governor had been first elected. So this is the kind of thing that can happen and it can also fire up a base. Absolutely. And when we're thinking about 2020, you know, President Trump needed Wisconsin and Michigan, won them by the narrowest of margins. Putting those on the board again, Democrats, you can be sure, are going to be fired up one more time. Right. Send the pendulum

swinging back. All right. Well, we're going to have to going to be fired up one more time. Right. Send the pendulum swinging back. All right. Well, we're going to have to leave it there. That is a wrap. We will be back tomorrow after the funeral service for President George H.W. Bush. Until then, record a timestamp for the top of the show and send it to us at nprpolitics at npr.org. And follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Just search for NPR Politics. We're there. We're easy to find. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Miles Parks.

I cover voting. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.