[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S215-S217]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              IMPEACHMENT

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, at this particular moment in our 
history, we are witnessing the convergence of three events.
  The Senate will likely be sworn in tomorrow for the impeachment trial 
of President Trump. One of the Articles of Impeachment that will be 
coming over from the House relates to the President's abuse of power--
the charge that he has used the power and prestige of the Office of the 
Presidency to, among other things, withhold vital U.S. security 
assistance to Ukraine in order to pressure it to announce an 
investigation into Burisma, Hunter Biden, and, possibly, Joe Biden in 
an attempt to get Ukraine to interfere in the upcoming 2020 election on 
behalf of President Trump.
  Now, I am not here today to go into issues directly related to that 
trial. It is vitally important that we get relevant witnesses, that we 
get relevant

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documents, and that we have a fair trial and get to the truth.
  The second event that we learned about just this week that relates to 
the impeachment trial was that Russian military hackers broke into the 
Burisma computers in Ukraine and that they used the same phishing 
techniques that the GRU used--the Russian military intelligence--to 
break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters' servers 
during the 2016 Presidential elections. All of the evidence points to 
another attempt by Vladimir Putin to use his military GRU hackers to 
interfere in an American election--this time in the 2020 election.
  I don't know what is going to happen during the election on November 
3 of this year. Obviously, each of us has his hopes as to what the 
result will be, but that is not the purpose of my being here on the 
floor today. My focus is on what should unite all of us in this body--
that should unite all 100 U.S. Senators--and that is that we should all 
agree that it is outrageous for any foreign power to interfere in an 
American election the way Russia interfered in our election in 2016 and 
that it would be equally outrageous for us, in our knowing that this is 
Russia's intent in 2020, to sit here and not do anything to protect the 
integrity of our democracy.
  Look, we all know what happened in 2016. Just to refresh our 
memories, it was the unanimous conclusion of all U.S. intelligence 
agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 Presidential election. That 
was the unanimous conclusion of the leaders of intelligence agencies 
appointed by President Trump. It was also the bipartisan verdict of the 
Senate Intelligence Committee, which painstakingly documented the fact 
that elections systems in all 50 of our States were targeted to one 
degree or another by Russian hackers in the 2016 elections. In fact, we 
know this from the outcome of the Mueller investigation that led to the 
indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence individuals, members of 
the GRU. They were indicted because of their interference in the 2016 
elections.
  We also know that Vladimir Putin and the Russians intend to interfere 
in our elections again in 2020. We know that because of the revelations 
this week about the actions the GRU is taking with respect to Burisma--
same fingerprint, same techniques--but we also know that from our own 
U.S. intelligence agencies, which, in November of last year, all got 
together to issue a warning that Russia was going to interfere again in 
2020.
  I am holding in my hand a joint statement from the leaders of U.S. 
intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and what they say is that 
our adversaries--and they point to Russia--will seek to interfere in 
the voting process or influence voter perceptions. This document is not 
about the past. This document is not about 2016. This document is about 
the here and now and the November 2020 elections. And this is, again, 
from the heads of our intelligence agencies and law enforcement 
agencies who have been appointed by President Trump.
  Now we have overwhelming evidence that Russia interfered in 2016, we 
have overwhelming evidence and predictions that Russia will interfere 
again in our elections in 2020, and so we clearly are facing an 
immediate danger to the integrity of our elections and our democracy. 
It is like we have a Russian missile in the air right now headed toward 
our election integrity systems and our electoral process. That is what 
the intelligence agencies are telling us right now.
  We learned the hard way in 2016, and now it is happening all over 
again. So the question for this body is, When you know something is 
happening, what are you going to do about it? There are two things we 
should be doing about it. We should be working to strengthen our 
elections systems here at home, to harden them, to make it more 
difficult for Russian military intelligence to hack into them. We 
should be working with social media companies to prevent the Russian 
Government and their agents from spending money on advertising on 
social media or using other techniques on social media to influence 
American voters. We need to be doing all that. We have appropriated 
some funds to do that.
  We should be doing more than we have, but the best defense is a good 
offense. We can and should spend money to strengthen and protect our 
elections systems, but that is not enough because it is kind of like 
the arms race. We will work to try to better strengthen and protect 
those systems, and the hackers who are trying to get in will develop 
new techniques to try to get around them. It is an endless cycle. That 
doesn't mean we shouldn't harden them--we should--but that is not 
enough to protect the integrity of our elections.
  We have to apply the principle that the best defense is a good 
offense and make it clear up front to Vladimir Putin and Russia that 
the costs of interfering in another American election far outweigh the 
benefits. That is what we need to do because right now it is absolutely 
cost-free to Vladimir Putin to mess around in our elections. In fact, 
it is a big benefit to Vladimir Putin and the Russians. That is why 
they do it.
  What do they accomplish? Well, first of all, they succeed in dividing 
Americans against one another. They succeed in undermining public 
confidence in the outcome of our elections, and that is part of their 
overall strategy--to try to undermine democracies, whether here in the 
United States or in Europe or other places around the world. Maybe they 
also succeed, ultimately, in weighing in and helping their preferred 
candidate in an election.
  But the point is, right now, if you are Putin, there is zero cost to 
getting caught interfering in our elections and lots of perceived 
benefits by Vladimir Putin. So that is why, more than 2 years ago, 
Senator Marco Rubio and I introduced the bipartisan DETER Act, and 
there are many other Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, who were 
on that bill. The DETER Act is very straightforward. It would enact 
into law a very straightforward proposition. It says to Russia--and 
also to other countries, but the main attack seems to be coming from 
Russia--it says to Putin and Russia: If we catch you again interfering 
in our elections, there will be immediate and very harsh penalties for 
you to pay.
  This will happen virtually automatically. So Vladimir Putin will know 
up front that if our intelligence agencies catch them again, which they 
are likely to do, then he will finally pay a price for interfering in 
our elections and trying to undermine our democratic processes. These 
are not sanctions against a couple of Putin's pals. These are not 
sanctions against a couple oligarchs. These would be sanctions against 
major sectors of the Russian economy--state-owned banks, state-owned 
parts of their energy industry--so their economy will take a big hit if 
we catch them attacking our democracy once again.
  That is absolutely appropriate because what Putin is doing is 
undermining faith and confidence in our democratic process, and we need 
to make it clear up front that there is a big price to pay--not because 
we want those sanctions to go into effect but because we don't. That, 
of course, is the entire idea behind deterrence. You raise the cost, 
you raise the price on Putin and Russia to the point it is no longer 
worth it to interfere in our elections.
  That is why Senator Rubio and I introduced this legislation 2 years 
ago. We hoped it would be in place before the 2018 midterm elections, 
but that date has passed, and still here we are in the U.S. Senate 
having failed to adopt this bipartisan legislation.
  I was right here on the floor of the Senate just a few months ago 
when we were debating the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. 
I asked for a vote to include the essential provision of the DETER Act 
in the Defense authorization bill because it makes a lot of sense that 
in a bill that is supposed to defend the United States, we include a 
provision to defend the integrity of our democracy and electoral system 
against Russian attack or any other attack. Apparently every single 
Senator in this body agreed because it passed unanimously.
  The Senate went on record unanimously saying we should include 
provisions like the DETER Act in the NDAA to deter Russian interference 
in our elections. Then we were in negotiations on the NDAA, and it 
turned out that in the back rooms, behind closed doors, the Trump 
administration got Republican Senators to insist on throwing that 
provision out of the NDAA bill.

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  This was one of the matters that was discussed until the final stages 
of negotiations on the NDAA, and apparently the majority leader and 
other Republican Senators, at the behest of the Trump administration, 
said no--said no to a provision that had been agreed to unanimously by 
this body to help protect our elections by deterring Russian 
interference. The question is, Why? Why, when our own intelligence 
agencies are telling us that Russia is planning to do in 2020 what they 
did in 2016, would Republican Senate leaders block a provision that 
lets Putin know ``You will be punished if you do that again. You will 
be punished if you attack our democracy''? And I haven't gotten a 
straight answer to that question. Why not? Why not include that 
provision? Clearly, there are Senators who don't want to build up our 
defenses and deterrence again Russian interference in our elections.
  When we failed to get that into the NDAA, I came to the Senate floor, 
and I asked for unanimous consent to bring up the bipartisan DETER Act. 
Because every one of the Senators in this body had voted or said 
through lack of objection that they wanted the DETER Act in the NDAA, I 
brought up the bill for unanimous consent passing here. Well, the 
chairman of the Senate Banking Committee came to the floor and 
objected, and we had a back-and-forth conversation about the DETER Act.
  Yesterday, I was planning to come to this floor and again ask for 
unanimous consent to take up the DETER Act, but we heard from the 
chairman of the Banking Committee that he wanted to find a way to get 
this done. So I am going to take the chairman of the Banking Committee 
up on that offer, and I hope we can get it done. But I want to be 
really clear. If we are not able to work this out in a smart, 
straightforward way, which is what the bill does right now--as I said, 
it has strong bipartisan support right now--then I will be back on the 
Senate floor regularly to ask for unanimous consent, and any other 
Senator who wants to come down here and object can do that. That is 
their right. But I am going to keep pushing this issue because the 
clock is ticking. Every day that passes while we know from our own 
intelligence agencies that Russia plans to interfere in the 2020 
election and we don't do anything about it--we are grossly negligent.
  I want Senators who are not going to support that to come here in the 
light of day and let the American public know they are blocking that 
effort. I hope we don't have to do that. I hope we can work this out. I 
hope we can pass the bipartisan legislation that has been sitting in 
the Senate for over 2 years now as we get warning after warning after 
warning that Vladimir Putin, the GRU, and the Russians intend to 
interfere in our democratic process again and attack the integrity of 
our electoral system.
  Let's get this done. Let's protect our democracy. Let's make it clear 
in advance to Putin that the price he will pay for trying to interfere 
in our democracy will be much higher than any benefit he expects to 
gain.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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