Madam President, later today, all Senators will have the opportunity to receive a classified briefing on an issue of huge national importance: the security and integrity of our elections. It is fitting that today's session be one…
Madam President, later today, all Senators will have the opportunity to receive a classified briefing on an issue of huge national importance: the security and integrity of our elections.
It is fitting that today's session be one bipartisan, all-Member briefing because, while it is a cliche to say that certain priorities ought to be above partisan squabbling, I know that every one of us shares a genuine concern in maintaining the process through which American democracy plays out.
Those of my colleagues who have read the January 2017 intelligence assessment and the Mueller report will understand that it is precisely our unity and our faith in our democratic system that Vladimir Putin seeks to undermine.
Along with Americans' First Amendment rights to express themselves and speak out, there are few things more fundamental to the maintenance of our Republic than the electoral process itself.
Thomas Paine wrote, ``The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.''
So preserving and protecting the elections that our State and local authorities conduct is a crucial task. From the Federal Government's perspective, States are firmly in the lead, but sometimes that means lending a hand to local authorities. Obviously, during the Civil Rights era, for example, some Federal guidelines were necessary to preserve integrity.
But many other times, doing the right thing means defending against interference, be it political interference in the constitutionally protected role of the States to conduct elections by politicians and bureaucrats here in Washington or, certainly, interference from America's adversaries abroad.
In 2016, Vladimir Putin sought to interfere in our elections. I have read the intelligence reports. I have read the Mueller report. I have talked with our Intelligence Committee, which has investigated this indepth and has a report coming out soon.
It is important to put Putin's efforts to interfere in our democracy in context because he didn't just decide in 2016 to take such a bold step. He kind of worked up to it, undermining an array of U.S. interests slowly but surely over 8 years of the previous administration's misguided approach to Russia.
Under President Obama, the U.S.-Russia relationship seemed to be defined by two constants: Putin's growing assertiveness in foreign meddling and the administration's failure to confront it.
Putin's 2008 invasion of the sovereign country of Georgia was met by the so-called reset in 2009, which swept the aggression under the rug. The United States may have reset our policy to
business as usual, but Putin's aggression continued full bore.
There was the failure to respond to Putin's efforts to strangle democracy in his own country by shuttering western NGOs, arresting dissidents, or possibly ordering the murder of political opponent Boris Nemtsov.
To the extent that the United States responded to the torture and murder by Russian authorities of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, it was due to congressional pressure.
There was also President Obama's response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Do any of my colleagues believe the administration's response to that outrageous assault on the sovereignty of Ukraine was sufficiently tough to defend against Putin's outrageous assault on fundamental principles of sovereignty and the international order?
There was the debacle with the President's redline in Syria, which turned out to be more like a red carpet for Russian influence in Syria and the Middle East.
And there was the President telling Putin's puppet Medvedev that he could have more ``flexibility'' to treat Russia differently once he became a lameduck.
All this was under a President who thought it was a clever laugh line to mock our now-colleague Senator Romney for correctly labeling Russia as a threat.
The consequences of American weakness toward Russia were numerous. The more Obama gave, the more Putin took.
Among those consequences, as we all know, was that Putin felt sufficiently emboldened to seek to interfere in our 2016 Presidential election. Through efforts to divide Americans on social media and to hack a political party, agents of a foreign government sought to inject division, doubt, and chaos into our democracy--a sad and embarrassing episode.
President Trump has expressed an interest in a better relationship with Russia, but the actions his administration has taken--which he has authorized--demonstrate that such a relationship will not prevent America from pushing back against Russian aggression.
The administration has pushed back against Russia in meaningful ways, imposing new costs on Putin and his cronies for their malign activities and improving our defenses against Russian active measures. We have adopted new national security and defense strategies that treat Russian aggression like the serious threat that it is. We have begun to rebuild our military strength, which was eroded by years of budget cuts and further damaged by sequestration. We have taken steps to provide Georgia and Ukraine with arms to defend against Russian aggression-- weapons denied to them by the previous administration despite bipartisan support from Congress. We worked to block Moscow's efforts to increase European reliance on Russian oil and gas. Secretary Mattis led efforts--continued by his successors--to reform and strengthen