Mueller made a case for election security, but lawmakers seemed largely disinterested

WASHINGTON - Robert Mueller sounded a warning bell yesterday about Russian efforts to compromise future U.S. elections, but the House lawmakers who grilled him for six hours appeared largely disinterested.

The former special counsel repeatedly warned the two House committees that Russia and other nations are already trying to undermine the 2020 contest. He also urged Congress to step up its efforts to protect the vote from foreign tampering - and ensure intelligence agencies were steering their resources toward countering that threat.

"Much more needs to be done in order to protect against this intrusions, not just by the Russians but others as well," Mueller said.

The lawmakers questioning Mueller, however, mostly eschewed his concerns in favor of partisan sniping, steering their questions to Democratic claims that President Donald Trump obstructed justice and Republican claims that the special counsel's investigation was politically biased against him.

The failure to focus on election security during the hearings reflects a broader impasse between Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who have not passed any significant election security reforms since Russian hackers upended the 2016 contest - with the exception of delivering $380 million for security to states in 2018 with no strings attached. As states demand more cash to upgrade aging voting systems, the deadlock is generally between Democrats who want to impose new security requirements on state election officials and Republicans who are wary of impinging on states' rights to run their own elections.

On the other side of the Capitol, Democratic senators did seize on Mueller's testimony to press Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for blocking any of their election security bills from coming up for a vote.

Here's Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N. M.: "Let that sink in. Politics aside, every American should be concerned that Russia interfered in the 2016 election."

And Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.: "If the President and his campaign can't be trusted to do the right thing and report foreign interference attempts to the FBI, then we need to require it by law."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted a rare moment focused on election security during the House hearings, when Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, asked Mueller about Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election.

Mueller replied with a sobering answer: "It wasn't a single attempt. [They are] doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it during the next campaign."

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., did make somewhat of a closing argument for increasing election security protections, though, ending the day by noting that "the Russians massively intervened in 2016, and they are prepared to do so again in voting that is set to begin a mere eight months from now."

To protect the nation, Schiff said, "we must make all efforts to harden our elections' infrastructure, to ensure there is a paper trail for all voting, to deter the Russians from meddling, to discover it when they do, to disrupt it, and to make them pay."

Here are three other major security takeaways from the day's hearings:

1. Mueller said accepting dirt on political adversaries from hackers shouldn't be "a new normal."

Mueller criticized the Trump campaign for being willing to accept disparaging information on Hillary Clinton and other Democrats from foreign hackers during 2016. "I hope this is not the new normal, but I fear it is," he said.

At several points, he noted that accepting such dirt could be illegal in certain circumstances.

The comments come after Trump said he would consider looking at information a foreign power provides on his 2020 opponents and may or may not alert the FBI about it.

2. Encryption got in the way of the Mueller probe.

The special counsel said his investigation was sometimes stymied by Trump administration officials using encrypted apps such as Signal that either shield communications from warrants or automatically delete them after a specified period.

The revelation, detailed in Mueller's report, didn't make much of a splash when it came out, but it could draw more attention in the wake of the Trump Justice Department reinvigorating its push to allow police special access to encrypted apps.

Attorney General William Barr charged Tuesday that terrorists are using those apps to secretly plan attacks and that drug smugglers are using them to plan major operations. Here's more about how encryption affected the Mueller investigation from CNN's Kevin Collier.

3. WikiLeaks is considered a "hostile intelligence service."

Mueller was eager to agree with Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., when he quoted Mike Pompeo, then the CIA director, describing WikiLeaks - which published troves of emails Russia hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta in 2016 - as a "hostile intelligence service."

Asked how he responded to quotes of Trump publicly praising WikiLeaks during the campaign, Mueller replied, "Problematic is an understatement in terms of what it displays, in terms of ... [giving some] hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity."