Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. All of you. In a few minutes, we'll begin our meeting of the Justice Department's Election threats task force. We're meeting today for the same reason I launched this task force three years ago. We have seen a dangerous increase in violent threats against public servants. The ones who administer our elections. Those threats and danger, our democracy itself. That is why over the past three years, we have accelerated our efforts to combat the increase in threats against election workers, officials and volunteers that followed the 2020 election. Our Election Threats Task Force has secured the guilty plea of a man who threatened an election worker in Michigan. The defendant made vile threats, saying that the election worker deserved a, quote, throat to the knife. We secured a three and a half year prison sentence for a man in Texas who threatened the lives of Arizona election officials and their children, and advocated for a mass shooting of poll workers and election workers in precincts he believed had, quote, suspect results. We secured a three and a half year prison sentence for a Massachusetts man for sending a bomb threat to an elections official in the Arizona Secretary of State's office. We secured a two year prison sentence for a man in Texas who Secured a two and a half year sentence in prison for an Iowa man who threatened to lynch an election official in Arizona. Each of these cases should serve as a warning if you threaten to harm or kill an election worker, volunteer or official. The Justice Department will find you and we will hold you accountable. The public servants who administer our elections must be able to do their jobs without fearing for their safety or that of their families. We will aggressively investigate and prosecute those who threaten election workers, protecting the right to vote was a founding purpose of the Justice Department. Today, fulfilling that charge means confronting the full range of threats to our elections that includes continuing our work through this task force, our U.S. Attorney's offices and our FBI offices across the country to investigate, disrupt, and combat unlawful threats against those who administer our elections. It includes the Civil Rights Division's essential work to enforce federal voting rights laws and to challenge discriminatory restrictions on access to the ballot. It includes the work of the Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section and our U.S. Attorney's offices to investigate and prosecute election crimes. And it includes our national security Division's and the FBI's work to protect our elections from national security threats, including malign foreign influence and cyber enabled campaigns. The Justice Department recognizes the urgency of these threats, and we are prepared to confront them. We will continue, continue to protect people's safety, and we will continue to protect our democracy. I want to close by expressing gratitude to the election workers across the country who ensure that the promise of our democracy is made real. I recognize that your work has become more difficult and dangerous these past few years. I also want to express my gratitude to the members of this task force and to its leader, John Keller, for your devotion to this critical mission. And I am grateful, as always, to the brave men and women of the FBI for their work. And thank you also to the Postal Inspection Service and to the Department of Homeland Security, our partners and our efforts to protect elections and election workers. Together, we promise that the Justice Department will be relentless in defending the right to vote and in defending the safety of the public servants who make voting possible. I now like to ask the deputy Attorney General to say a few words. Thank you, Mr. Attorney General, and good afternoon, everyone in the Department of Justice has no more important priority than keeping our communities safe, and that includes those who work to ensure we can exercise our basic rights, the most fundamental of which is the right to vote. It is after all, the right that secures all our other rights. The Election Threats Task Force plays a key role in this mission, and it reflects the critical collaboration needed to combat threats to election officials. Together, you've all prosecuted a series of important and demanding cases, making clear that we will not tolerate threats to our democratic process and to the election workers who serve and safeguard it. A particularly disturbing trend across these cases is the way perpetrators use new technologies to mask their identities and communicate their threats. Not that long ago, when a criminal wanted to convey a threat, they only had a couple options a pen and paper, maybe a telephone later, a text message or an email. But today, criminals use a range of anonymizing technologies, not just burner phones and social media, but onion routers, VoIP platforms and overseas internet service providers. Now, this isn't just limited to threats to election workers. It extends to other crimes involving intimidation and hoaxes like swatting. Now, some criminals may believe that these new technologies enable them to act with impunity, but they'd be wrong because as criminal tools get more sophisticated, so do our investigations. Working with experienced investigators at the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Postal Inspection Service, we're unmasking these criminals and holding them to account. Over the past several years, our democratic process and the public servants who protect it have been under attack like never before. As threats evolve and spread today, those threats are being supercharged by advanced technologies. The most disruptive of which is artificial intelligence, emboldening those threatening election workers and the integrity of our elections. These advanced tools are providing new avenues for bad actors to hide their identities and obscure the sources of violent threats they're providing new avenues to misinform and threaten voters through deepfakes, spreading altered video or cloned audio, impersonating trusted voices. And they're providing new avenues to recruit and radicalize us with incendiary social media content that accelerates votes online hate and harassment. As these crimes mutate with technology, they may be easier to hide and cheaper to perpetrate, but they are still crimes. Let me be clear violent threats using AI are still violent threats. So in these cases where threat actors use advanced technology like artificial intelligence to make their crimes more dangerous and more impactful, the Department of Justice will seek enhanced sentences. Election workers are on the front lines of this threat. Accelerated landscape and the election threats Task Force will continue to hold accountable those who threaten these public servants, their families and the functioning of our democratic process. As I stated when we launched this task force nearly three years ago, a threat to any election official, worker or volunteer is at bottom a threat to our democracy. I know the Election Threats Task Force is adapting to these threats and will meet these challenges head on. Thank you all once again for your tremendous work to protect our democracy and to keep election workers safe. Now I will turn it to the FBI director. Thanks, Lisa. I want to thank the attorney general and the deputy attorney general for bringing this group together and for your leadership with the Election Threats Task Force. I also want to thank everyone here today for the important work you do to protect our elections. Election workers, many of whom are volunteers and all of whom are public servants, are the lifeblood of our elections. From the local officials and employees who administer elections to the poll workers who staff voting sites. On election day, election workers play a critical role in ensuring all eligible citizens can freely exercise their fundamental right to vote, and they deserve our gratitude for that vital work. Unfortunately too often all across the country, election workers have instead faced threats in the run up to and even after our elections. So let me be clear. Any threat of violence to an election official volunteer or staff is completely unacceptable and something the FBI takes very seriously. And we're committed to ensuring threats to election workers. Receive the swift and thorough response they deserve, whether that's through federal investigation and prosecution or a referral to our state and local partners. That commitment is reflected in the work of the Election Threats Task Force, where working with our DOJ partners, we've recently secured more than a dozen convictions for threats specifically targeting election officials. The work, the FBI. The work the task force does builds on the efforts of election crime coordinators. The FBI has had in place all across the country for years. Each of our 56 field offices has had election crimes coordinators, special agents and intelligence analysts who stand ready to field threats if they arise and coordinate a response when it comes to protecting elections, partnership and preparedness are key. So our election crimes coordinators work closely, not just with Operation and intelligence personnel at FBI headquarters, but also with state and local election officials, local law enforcement and our intelligence partners. We're helping build resilience by sharing threat information on trends and best practices based on our nationwide perspective, we're taking steps now to prepare for the full range of potential election threats and ensuring lines of communication are open so we can share threat information quickly. And when it comes to threats of violence, even though state and local law enforcement are the lead when it comes to physical security, we're committed to vigorously investigating and pursuing violations of federal law and to making sure all calls and reports of threats get to the right place. The work election workers do to ensure our elections are free and fair could not be more important, and we're committed to doing our part to make sure they can do that work free from threats of violence or intimidation. Thank you.
