House Oversight Democrats are calling on the Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the committee’s chairman, to force Department of Homeland Security officials to hand over all documents related to Russian efforts to hack 21 states’ voting systems during the 2016 election.

In a letter sent Jan. 29, committee Democrats give Gowdy until Feb. 5 to issue a subpoena for DHS documents following several attempts to get department officials to provide information on the attempted election system meddling.CAPITOL

“Despite repeated requests over the past several months, the Department has refused to provide the Oversight Committee with this information, and to the best of our knowledge, has not provided it to any congressional committee,” the committee Democrats wrote in their letter. “We have been extremely patient, but we can no longer allow the Trump Administration to defy our requests and withhold this critical information from Congress.”

Intelligence community reports have indicated that at least 21 states faced Russian government-backed attempts to infiltrate or monitor their election systems. Lawmakers have raised concerns that it took DHS officials nearly a year to alert state officials of the hacking attempts (Defense Daily, Dec. 19).

Oversight Committee Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and IT Subcommittee Ranking Member Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) asked DHS in October 2017 for all documents months related to Russian meddling efforts in the 21 states. They received one email detailing the script department officials used when discussing the topic with state election officials.

Cummings and Kelly sent a letter earlier this month calling on DHS’ National Protection and Programs Directorate lead Chris Krebs to provide the previously requested documents by Jan. 19. Krebs has yet to provide the documents according to the latest letter.

If Gowdy declines to issue the subpoena, committee Democrats have requested a motion to debate and vote on the issue.

“The Intelligence Community has warned us that Russia intends to continue interfering with elections in the United States and around the world. It is our responsibility to obtain information about what happened in 2016 so we can adequately prepare for future attempts to interfere with our democracy,” they wrote in their letter.