“Moscow Mitch” McConnell, “the Grim Reaper” of the Senate “graveyard” where bills go to die on his whim, has for the past year sought to prevent any of the election security bills — several of them with broad bipartisan support — designed to deter Russian interference in the 2020 election to come to a formal vote in the Senate.
“Moscow Mitch” McConnell is knowingly and willfully disregarding the numerous warnings of the intelligence community that Russia’s interference in our elections has never ceased since 2016, and is likely to occur again with greater sophistication and frequency in 2020. “Moscow Mitch” McConnell and his fellow traveler “Rootin’ for Putin” Republicans in the Senate are purposefully and intentionally leaving U.S. elections vulnerable to interference from Russia and potentially other state actors. The American people should be up in arms outraged, and demanding to know why Republicans fail to defend their country from foreign cyber attacks.
Steve Benen reports, For the third time this year, GOP rejects election-security bill:
Over the summer, a pair of senators – one Democrat and one Republican – partnered on a new election-security proposal called the Defending Elections from Threats by Establishing Redlines (DETER Act). The idea behind Sens. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-Md.) and Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) bill was pretty straightforward: if U.S. intelligence agencies were to determine that Russia interfered in another federal election, new sanctions would kick in targeting Russia’s finance, defense and energy sectors.
The point, obviously, would be to create a disincentive, letting the Kremlin know in advance that Russia would face significant economic consequences if Moscow once again attacked our democratic institutions.
The bill picked up a bipartisan group of co-sponsors, and it seemed like the sort of proposal that might even have a chance in the Republican-led Senate. At least that was the hope before it was blocked yesterday on the Senate floor. Axios reported:
A Republican senator is blocking bipartisan legislation meant to counter foreign election interference, saying it is more anti-Trump than anti-Russia.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) objected Tuesday when Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) sought consent to pass the DETER bill, as reported by The Hill…. The stalled legislation comes as U.S. intelligence agencies predict Russia and other foreign countries will attempt to interfere in the 2020 election.
Van Hollen, the lead sponsor, explained, “This has nothing to do with President Trump, this has to do with protecting our elections.” Crapo, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, was unmoved.
“The mechanisms in this bill have been designed more to attack the Trump administration and Republicans than to attack the Russians and those who would attack our country and our elections,” the Idaho Republican argued.
I’m not altogether sure how Crapo arrived at that conclusion, or why exactly he believes a bipartisan proposal to impose sanctions on Russia would, as a practical matter, effectively represent an “attack” on the Trump administration and Republicans.
What’s more, if these circumstances seem familiar, it’s because the DETER Act isn’t the only election-security measure to be rejected by Senate Republicans.
As regular readers may recall, the Democratic-led House passed the “Securing America’s Federal Elections Act” (SAFE Act), which would, among other things, require voting systems to use backup paper ballots, mandate tech safeguards, and provide resources to states to improve their election-security measures.
In October, however, when Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tried to pass a package of election-related measures – including a Senate companion to the SHIELD Act – Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) blocked the effort.
Soon after, the House also passed the Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act, which would, among other things, require candidates to notify law enforcement authorities in the event of a foreign power offering campaign assistance.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) – who picked up the “Moscow Mitch” moniker after balking at other bills on election security – said his GOP-led chamber would ignore this bill, too.
Occasionally, Republican lawmakers will make the case that they’re genuinely interested in doing something on the issue, especially in the face of warnings from U.S. officials about the likelihood of further Russian intervention, but they simply cannot go along with the Democratic-led proposals, even the ones with GOP co-sponsors.
In fact, even Crapo, while blocking a bipartisan bill yesterday and claiming the bipartisan bill wasn’t bipartisan enough, said “maybe” senators can “come together” at some point to pass an election-security bill.
What it would take to make Republicans happy as they reject one bill after another is unclear.
Maybe what would make these “Rootin’ for Putin” Republicans happy is to give Russian intelligence agencies direct access to our vulnerable election systems through Donald Trump’s insane proposal for a joint cyber security unit with Russia.
In 2017, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed forming “an impenetrable Cyber Security unit” to address issues like the risk of cyber meddling in elections. Trump backtracks on cyber unit with Russia after harsh criticism. In 2018, Trump tried to revive his insane idea again. Trump-Putin meeting rekindles ridiculed cyber plan. “It could go down as one of the most ridiculed ideas in cybersecurity that won’t go away: a joint Russian-American task force to protect future elections from hackers.”
The next best thing to giving Russians direct access to our vulnerable election systems is simply to do nothing and leave these systems vulnerable to Russian cyber attacks. The Russians, no doubt, have since learned a great deal from their extensive efforts to penetrate U.S. elections systems in 2016, and may now be in a position to carry out a far more sophisticated cyber attack in 2020. Trump and “Rootin’ for Putin” Republicans are essentially giving a stand down order to allow this to happen.
“Moscow Mitch” McConnell and his “Rootin’ for Putin” Republicans in the Senate are betraying our free and fair elections and our national security. They are betraying their country.
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