Florida's Secretary of State is disputing Clinton's claim at the TIME 100 Summit
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report said that Russian spies attempted to hack into many of Florida’s local election systems, succeeding in penetrating “at least one” county government network.
But Mueller did not say any more than that.
At Tuesday’s TIME 100 Summit, Hillary Clinton went much further, claiming that the government had said that every Florida county election system was hacked during the 2016 election.
Discussing Russian interference in the election, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee told TIME Editor in Chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal that the federal government recently “acknowledged that the Russians were in the county election systems of every county in Florida.”
But Laurel Lee, Florida’s top elections official, says that’s not true.
“I spoke with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security when the Mueller report was released and they assured me that Florida’s 2016 election results were not compromised in any way,” Lee said in a statement.
Lee, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, added that federal investigators have not provided the state with any information to “support Hillary Clinton’s claims” that all of the election systems were infiltrated.
Russian targeting of Florida election systems was mentioned both in the Mueller report and an indictment of Russian officials who allegedly plotted to interfere in the election.
The Mueller report said that Russian officials who were members of the Russian intelligence agency GRU sent “spearphishing” emails to more than 120 email accounts “used by Florida county officials responsible for administering the 2016 U.S. election,” succeeding in penetrating at least one county.
Meanwhile, the indictment said that the Russian officials sent “over 100 spearphishing emails to organizations and personnel involved in administering elections in numerous Florida counties.” The indictment did not say whether any counties had been infiltrated.
In a separate statement last week, Lee said that the FBI had declined to say which county was accessed.
A representative for Clinton did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.