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Raddatz asked Lankford on Sunday, “Do you have any evidence that that is true?”

Lankford responded, \"No, the – the Russians are trying to interfere with everyone’s election, and that’s the part that we lose track of. To them, sowing chaos and sowing uncertainty within our democracy is their key goal.\"

“They've done this in other countries,\" he said. \"Now they're doing it to us as well. We should respond with sanctions. We should try to push back and also understand they're going to go after every candidate through the process.”

He said one side of the Russian cyberattack on U.S. elections is to spread misinformation, and another side is \"hacking into computers as they did for the [Democratic National Committee in 2016], hacking into state election systems ... So for Americans, they’ve got to be able to pay attention to what information’s coming in front of them.\"

\"PHOTO:
Al Drago/Getty Images
PHOTO: Sen. James Lankford questions retired Vice Adm. Joseph Maguire during a Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing, to become the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, on Capitol Hill, on July 25, 2018 in Washington, D.C.
>

A cybersecurity expert who also appeared on “This Week” Sunday told Raddatz that election-related computer systems are better secured now than they were in 2016, but that the U.S. is still “unprepared for” a misinformation campaign by Russians.

“The thing we're unprepared for is the influence campaign that Russia has undertaken, the attempt to undermine our democracy, to undermine our power, to turn Americans against themselves and against their institutions,” the expert, Niloofar Razi Howe, said. “That's the long play that they're going for, so I think we can be somewhat confident that the election itself is protected. We ought to be concerned about the long-term strategic goals that the Russians have.”

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