Summary
- The Senate Homeland Security Committee advanced Sean Plankey nomination.
- Plankey is Trump’s pick to lead the CISA agency.
- CISA secures the nation's critical infrastructure, including election systems.
- Plankey served in Trump’s first administration cyber roles.
- Nomination now moves to the full Senate for confirmation vote.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee recommended Sean Plankey as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) by a vote of 9–6.
Republicans have criticized the agency for some of its election-related operations, and it has been facing budget and staff cuts.
In the first Trump administration, Plankey served as the National Security Council's director for cyber strategy before becoming the senior deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy. He retired from the U.S. Coast Guard in 2023.
He will take over an agency that has been enmeshed in partisan disputes over its proper role in addressing election fraud and voting fraud allegations if the Republican-controlled Senate confirms him. Since Trump began fabricating allegations of widespread fraud that resulted in his defeat in the 2020 election, Republicans have become distrustful of election officials and voting equipment as a result of those assertions. Most Republicans continue to hold the view that Democrat Joe Biden was not the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election.
In his quest for confirmation, Plankey may encounter the following challenge: His candidacy was put on hold in April by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who demanded that CISA publish an unclassified 2022 assessment on telecommunications vulnerabilities. Wyden declared on Wednesday that he would not back down until the report was made public.
CISA is responsible for safeguarding the country's vital infrastructure, including banks, voting machines, power plants, and dams.
Both party state election officials have praised it for its efforts to safeguard those systems. Republicans, however, have also harshly attacked it, saying that its attempts to combat false information on elections and the COVID-19 outbreak have crossed the line into censorship. Kristi Noem claimed the agency had veered "far off mission" during her Senate hearing in January to become secretary of homeland security.
According to CISA officials, they only collaborated with states in 2020 to assist them in alerting social media firms to false material propagating on their platforms; they have never participated in censorship. They said that the agency made no attempt to direct or pressure those businesses to take any action.
In 2024, CISA collaborated with other federal authorities to notify the public of a number of election-related foreign disinformation campaigns.
Plankey did not immediately respond when Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., questioned him on if the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. Rather, he claimed that his personal views were irrelevant and that he had not examined the cybersecurity of that election. He accepted that Biden had been sworn in and that the Electoral College had verified his victory.
Blumenthal then pressed Plankey on what he would do if Trump later pushed him to falsely claim the 2026 or 2028 elections were rigged.
“Senator, as a cybersecurity professional, these are state-run elections,”
Plankey answered.
“I have not reviewed the cybersecurity posture of all 50 states. That’s like a doctor who’s diagnosing somebody over the television because they saw him on the news.”
“No,”
Blumenthal replied.
“It’s like a doctor who has a patient come to him and is responsible for doing the diagnosis.”
The senator accused Plankey of "undermining the confidence of the nation in the election apparatus" and referred to his responses as "unsatisfactory."
During Trump's second term, Plankey will also have to manage an agency that is going through structural reforms. This entails reducing personnel and resources as well as halting election security efforts while a Homeland Security review is conducted.
In light of the anticipated multimillion-dollar budget cuts and staff departures, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., questioned Plankey about how he would guarantee the agency's legislative duties are fulfilled.
The nominee commended the agency's employees' cybersecurity skills and stated that he had learnt to "let the operators operate" from his leadership experience. He promised to restructure CISA or request additional funding if necessary.
Plankey’s advancement comes as the ranking Democrats on the House and Senate committees overseeing elections have sent multiple letters to CISA leadership requesting information about its workforce cuts and the status of its efforts to support election infrastructure. They have not received a response.
Trump signed an executive order earlier this year directing the U.S. Justice Department to investigate former CISA head Chris Krebs and strip his security clearances. Krebs became a target of Trump’s ire after he insisted the 2020 election was secure and that ballot counts were accurate.
How have senators from both parties responded to the nominee in hearings or public statements?
Senators from both parties gave a mostly warm but somewhat divided reception to Sean Plankey, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), during his Senate committee hearing.
Democratic senators, including Sen. Dick Blumenthal (D-CT), pressed Plankey repeatedly on his views about the integrity of the 2020 election, but Plankey largely avoided definitive answers, stating he was not positioned to assess past state-run elections.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has expressed significant objections and placed a hold on the nomination due to CISA’s refusal to release a 2022 report on telecommunications security vulnerabilities, using the hold as leverage to force transparency.