Russia Hacked Two Florida Counties in the 2016 Election, Gov. Ron DeSantis Confirms

On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) confirmed that Russians hacked the Supervisor of Elections networks for two Florida counties in the 2016 presidential election. This does not cast doubt on the results of that election, however.

“I have recently met with the FBI concerning the election issue mentioned in the Mueller report which I guess came out a couple weeks ago,” DeSantis said. “And this is for the 2016 election: two Florida counties experienced intrusion into the Supervisor of Election networks. There was no manipulation or anything but there was voter data that was able to be gotten.”

“Now, that voter data I think was public anyways, nevertheless those were intrusions. It did not affect any voting or anything like that,” the governor added. “When the FBI will talk about election infrastructure, they include anything that could be in the Supervisor of Elections. This was something where they had a spearfishing, someone clicked on it, so someone was able to get access to things but nothing that affected the vote count.”

Gov. DeSantis on Fla. counties' election hacking: "I recently met with the FBI concerning the election issues mention in the Mueller report," DeSantis said. "Two Florida counties experienced intrusions into supervisor of elections networks." https://t.co/H06rKzORXI pic.twitter.com/0h4bJKLXS6

— Spectrum Bay News 9 (@BN9) May 14, 2019

DeSantis said he signed an agreement with the FBI not to disclose the names of the counties, the Associated Press reported. Election officials in those countries are aware of the intrusions, however.

Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.