Rachel Maddow Blows Up Brian Kemp’s Bogus Democratic Hack Claim In Georgia

Rachel Maddow interviewed the former head of security for Facebook and wrecked Georgia Sec. of State Brian Kemp’s claim of Democratic cybercrimes.

Maddow asked, “This was an explosive claim today. But we’ve been looking into it this afternoon and into this evening. From a distance, it seems like what may have happened here is that Kemp’s office got notified that there were problems there were evident problems in terms of the security of the Georgia voting system that he oversees. He responded to that notification by claiming that the Democrats must have been trying to hack into the system. If they found all of those vulnerabilities. That’s what we’re sort of discerning from a distance. Can you help us understand what actually happened here?”

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Stamos answered, “That’s right. There’s a history here in Georgia of independent third parties reporting possible vulnerabilities to the secretary of state’s office. In this case within hours of getting notification of a new vulnerability on their website, they came out with this press release, possibly blaming the democratic party. You know it’s part of a tradition here of not taking these vulnerabilities seriously, and in this case, making a really reckless claim before that could possibly be any data to back it up.”

He later added, “Georgia is only one of five states in the United States that does not have a paper back-up to their voting. This means if there’s a direct attack against the voting infrastructure, we will not be able to recreate what happened in that state with any certainty. That’s unacceptable with the level of risk our elections are facing these days. The second is there’s been a history over the last two years of a number of groups coming to Georgia and saying we’ve found vulnerabilities in your system and the way responsible organizations deal with this in 2018, is they say thank you for turning that over. We’ll investigate it and they work to fix the flaw. Instead, the secretary of state has continuously threatened those researchers, in this case, specifically pointing the finger to political opponents. Without having any evidence to back it up.”

Brian Kemp pulled a page out of Trump’s playbook. While he and the Republican Party are trying to rig the election in Georgia, he blamed Democrats for trying to rig the same election. Kemp’s accusation is totally bogus and he has no evidence to back it up. As Stacey Abrams said, the Republicans in Georgia are desperate, and they are resorting to extreme measures to try to hold on to power in the Peach State.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association