By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY
ATLANTA (AP) — Staffers at the nation’s cybersecurity agency whose job is to ensure the security of U.S. elections have been placed on administrative leave, jeopardizing critical support provided to state and local election offices across the country.
In recent days, 17 employees of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who have worked with election officials to provide assessments and trainings dealing with a range of threats — from cyber and ransomware attacks to physical security of election workers — have been placed on leave pending a review, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Ten of those employees are regional election security specialists hired as part of an effort to expand field staff and election security expertise ahead of the 2024 election. The regional staffers were told the internal review would examine efforts to combat attempts by foreign governments to influence U.S. elections, duties that were assigned to other agency staff, according to the person.
All were former state or local election officials who were brought in to build relationships across all 50 states and the nation’s more than 8,000 local election jurisdictions. They spent the past year meeting with election officials, attending conferences and trainings, and ensuring officials were aware of the agency’s various cybersecurity and physical security services.
A request for comment Monday to a CISA representative and a representative of the Department of Homeland Security was not returned.
State election officials of both political parties have defended CISA’s work to help secure election offices from a range of cybersecurity and physical threats.
Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, said the agency’s work had been particularly valuable for county clerks in his state.
“The most value that we’ve got from CISA has been the people that they have on the ground in our state that build direct relationships, not just with us but with the individual county clerks,” Adams said during an interview late last month. “They’re teaching them and helping them check their physical security and their cyber hygiene, and that’s been extremely popular.”
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said during an interview in late January that the agency had been a critical partner for state and local election officials.
“And I hope that leaders in the federal government who claim to care about election integrity will recognize that,” she said.
The other staffers placed on leave are current or former members of the agency’s Election Security and Resilience team, who were told the review was looking into agency efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation campaigns, according to the person familiar with the situation. The 10 election security specialists who worked with state and local election officials reported to a different team at CISA, the field operations division.
The personnel moves come as questions have been swirling about the future of the agency in the face of sustained criticism from Republicans and key figures in the Trump administration. President Donald Trump’s new homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said during her Senate confirmation hearing last month that CISA had strayed “far off mission” and she pledged to work with senators “should you wish to rein them in.”
Trump has not named a replacement for former CISA Director Jen Easterly, and agency leadership was noticeably absent from recent meetings of state election officials in the nation’s capital.
CISA was formed in 2018 during the first Trump administration and is charged with protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, from dams and nuclear power plants to banks and voting systems. While CISA is under the Department of Homeland Security, it’s a separate agency with its own Senate-confirmed director.
Trump and his allies remain angry over the agency’s work to counter misinformation about the 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Agency officials have said CISA was never engaged in censorship. During the 2020 election, CISA officials worked with states to help them notify social media companies about misinformation spreading on their platforms, but they have said they never instructed or sought to coerce those companies to act.
For the 2024 election, CISA and other federal agencies alerted the public to various foreign misinformation campaigns, including three fake videos linked to Russia purporting to show election misconduct in battleground states.
A spokesperson with the National Association of State Election Directors said Monday the group could not comment on CISA’s personnel decisions and looks forward to hearing from agency officials about the organization’s plans for election-related work.
Maria Benson, a spokeswoman with the National Association of Secretaries of State, said the group had requested a staffing update from CISA. She said CISA “has relayed to NASS that all cybersecurity and physical security services are expected to be available to state and local election officials.”