The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S1619 on March 12, 2018.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on a different subject--Russia. Despite heaps of evidence Russia interfered in our election, President Trump has hardly lifted a finger to punish Russia or safeguard future elections. This is a dereliction of duty.
Over the last few weeks, the Senate has heard testimony from the DNI--the Director of National Intelligence--and the head of the U.S. Cyber Command. Neither had been directed by the administration to counter Russia's continued efforts to undermine our democracy. A report in the New York Times last week documented how President Trump's State Department ``has yet to spend any of the $120 million it has allocated since late 2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy.'' Still, the Trump administration has not fully implemented the sanctions Congress passed to punish Putin.
Meanwhile, Russia-linked bots continue to sow division and inflame political tensions on social media. Multiple officials from the intelligence community have warned that Russia will try to interfere in our elections again. We have done nothing to harden our election security in anticipation of the midterms.
Our democracy is under attack, and the President of the United States seems unwilling to punch back or even harden our defenses. It is as if an enemy naval flotilla were headed to our shores, and we didn't put up any defense. That is exactly what is happening. It is a new world. It is not a flotilla of a navy or planes buzzing along our coasts, but it is these cyber attacks and social media attacks on our election system, but they are every much as vital to America as our physical defense. Yet we hear nothing, nothing, nothing out of the White House.
You only have to look to our ally, the United Kingdom, for an example of how a nation should respond to the threat from Russia. Just today, Prime Minister Theresa May went to the House of Commons to expose a likely Russian attack against two people in her country using a nerve agent. She demanded a response from President Putin and promised appropriate countermeasures if he refuses or the answer is insufficient.
Prime Minister May's quick and decisive action is exactly what is missing from President Trump when it comes to cyber security in our elections.
President Trump still has an opportunity. Over the weekend, President Putin rather ridiculously blamed Ukrainians, Jews, or other minorities for the attack on our election in 2016--another attempt, of course, at misdirection and distraction. In reality, Special Counsel Mueller's investigation has charged 13 Russian nationals with subverting the 2016 elections--not Ukrainians, not Tatars, not Jews but 13 Russian nationals.
Today Leader Pelosi and I, alongside Senator Feinstein and Congressman Nadler, sent President Trump a letter urging him to use all available resources to extradite the 13 Russian nationals named in the special counsel's investigation to stand trial here in the United States. Ensuring these Russian nationals stand trial in the United States would be a clear signal to those who seek to meddle with our elections that their actions are not without consequences. This is imperative to deter Russia and any other nation in the future from attacking our democracy. This is another test of President Trump's leadership and another test he is failing miserably.
If President Trump really cared about our country, he would expand every resource in his possession to bring justice to these foreign actors who meddled with our country's most sacred democratic process--
the one enshrined by the Founding Fathers, embraced and even worshiped by Americans over the centuries with good reason.
Now there is meddling in this sacred process and President Trump does nothing? Why are we not hearing anything from those on the other side of the aisle about that? You can be sure that if it were another President--particularly a Democratic one--we would hear howls, but this is not about Democrats or Republicans. This is about our democracy, and Americans inevitably ask the question, Why is President Trump so afraid to do anything about Putin?
I yield the floor.
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