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A senior administration official tells me that while Secretary Nielsen grew frustrated with the White House‘s lack of engagement on election security, she continued to push the matter on her own, organizing two principals' meetings on her own -- hosted at DHS offices in DC 1/
2/ Nielsen also pressed to brief the Hill on election threats and the Administration’s mitigation efforts, participating in briefings for the House and Senate on election security.
3/ Her efforts, and those of DHS and other agencies, also took place outside of DC, participating in an election security summit in St. Louis, meeting with secretaries of state at conventions to talk about DHS support, and was involved in a "election apocalypse" exercise in CO
4/ "Nielsen pushed the idea that Election Security is National Security," the official said. "There's a set of facts here that reflects how seriously she and DHS took this."
5/"There was a real frustration because several Administration officials wanted a more strategic approach out of the NSC and what we got instead was a few policy documents, including a reference to elections in the National Cyber Strategy,...
6/"...an Executive Order on Election Interference and a Presidential Determination authorizing certain operations by DOD," the senior administration official said. “The message was clear, whether intentional or not. ‘You’re the operational agencies, operate.’ ”
7/ The official noted that the tensions are not a matter of officials needing day to day permission to do their jobs -- "Wray and Nakasone don't need daily guidance," the official said, referring to the directors of the FBI and NSA.
8/ “Ultimately, it would have been a good thing for the President to make a strong public statement on the security efforts around the 2018 election, but it wasn’t going to happen," the senior administration official tells me.
