What deserves the attention of every inattentive American
Mueller made it clear that his largest concern is with Russia’s extraordinary effort to disrupt U.S. democratic processes. As he put it, “The Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”
On one of the rare occasions when he went beyond his role as a lawyer and showed flashes of emotion, he said this:
Over the course of my career, I have seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious. And as I said on May 29, this deserves the attention of every American.
In his report and testimony, Mueller depicts the Trump campaign not as conspiring or coordinating with Russia, but as enthusiastically welcoming its efforts. Agree or not, those efforts represent a continuing danger.
To members of Congress, Mueller’s challenge was clear: What are you going to do about that? [Continue reading…]
Congressional leadership is arguably an oxymoron. In its absence, are Americans loudly demanding that Congress does everything it can to guarantee the integrity of the next presidential election? Not if a CNN poll conducted in March still serves as a reliable indicator of public sentiment:
This may explain why GOP senators apparently fear no political penalty for continuing to promote the conspiracy theory that Russian interference is itself a conspiracy theory and on that basis, blocking new measures to protect the electoral process. (That said, there’s certainly a kind of genius, emblematic of these times, in which a conspiracy can successfully employ the disguise of being a conspiracy theory.)
Republicans in the Senate have twice in 24 hours blocked the advancement of bills aimed at strengthening election security just hours after former special counsel Robert Mueller warned of the continued threat that foreign powers interfering in US elections.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell came to the Senate floor Thursday to personally object to House-passed legislation backed by Democrats. This comes after Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi objected to a trio of bills on Wednesday, in keeping with long standing GOP arguments that Congress has already responded to election security needs for the upcoming election.
Democratic Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Ron Wyden of Oregon had advocated for the bills on the Senate floor, asking for unanimous consent to pass the package, but that ask can be halted with an objection from any senator.
Two of those bills would require campaigns to report to federal authorities any attempts by foreign entities to interfere in US elections, and the third is aimed at protecting from hackers the personal accounts and devices of senators and some staffers.
On Thursday, McConnell called the House-passed legislation Democrats wanted to clear “so partisan it received just one Republican vote over in the House.” He added that any election security legislation the Senate takes up must be bipartisan and also alleged that this bill is being pushed by the same Democrats who pushed the “conspiracy theory” of President Donald Trump and Russia.
Julia Davis, monitoring reactions on Russian state media to the Mueller hearings, writes:
Olga Skabeeva was tickled pink when CNN analyst Harry Enten loudly exclaimed in a March video: “Look at the Russia investigation. Zero percent said it was the most important issue to their vote in 2020. Exactly zero, zero, zero, zero respondents said Russia … Voters are not really thinking about this and if you speak to the candidates out on the campaign trail and follow them along, they really were not talking about the Russia investigation at all—at all!”
Russian state TV experts and pundits listened in, collectively grinning like Cheshire cats. Olga Skabeeva happily re-stated: “Zero people blamed Russia for election interference—zero times!”, which was not the question in the poll. And she added later: “We’re officially laughing at their allegations of election interference.”
In keeping with the best traditions of Russian state television, Skabeeva lied: “We didn’t interfere in anything and even Mueller said so.”
Yes, yes, and again yes. https://t.co/POwFAaeBqz
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) July 24, 2019