A few months into President Donald Trump’s second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security made an unusual request of its agency focused on cybersecurity: Secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it.
The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request.
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The CISA employees repeatedly told the political appointees that their request was impossible, in part because the agents capable of pulling off such an operation had just been laid off by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The appointees eventually stopped pressing CISA.
https://www.propublica.org/article/cisa-election-security-donald-trump
ProPublicaTrump Appointees Asked a Federal Cybersecurity Agency to Secretly Acquire a Voting Machine — and Hack ItThough not acted on, the request shows how the Trump administration has tried to use the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for its own ends while draining it of resources to help its mission of protecting the nation’s voting systems.