[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 36 (Monday, February 24, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S1103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            National Defense

  Mr. President, on another front, again, the frustration of how this 
administration has conducted itself is unprecedented. I know some of my 
colleagues like to say that it is just like Obama. It isn't even close.
  Here are some more examples, unfortunately, on the trampling of the 
rule of law in this country.
  Emboldened by the refusal of Senate Republicans to hold him 
accountable in his impeachment trial, President Trump has been 
interfering with the Justice Department and retaliating against 
officials in his administration who dare testify truthfully before 
Congress.
  In the short week that we have spent in recess, the President has 
managed to plunge our country even deeper into chaos and certainly has 
shown the need for having a trial during impeachment with witnesses and 
documents, getting the truth and not rubberstamping President Trump's 
behavior.
  The President continued to purge his administration, firing officials 
who refused to pledge allegiance to the President over their allegiance 
to the Constitution. The President classified Bolton's book in another 
blatant attempt to cover up the facts. This is what dictatorships do--
dictatorships. They say something is classified; they hide the truth. 
It is a disgrace.
  The President continued to abuse the pardon power, in one instance 
commuting the sentence of a notoriously corrupt former official without 
rhyme or reason. Maybe most egregious of all, the President, angered 
that the Director of National Intelligence had the gall to conduct a 
bipartisan briefing for the House Intelligence Committee on foreign 
interference in our elections, replaced him with a political lackey--a 
yes-man as the head of DNI, where truth needs to be spoken probably 
more than any other place in the government. He has no experience in 
the intelligence community and is simply known as an acolyte to 
President Trump.
  With each of these actions--I hate to say it, but it is true; any 
objective person will know--President Trump brings our Nation closer 
and closer and closer to a banana republic, a government not of laws 
but of one man, a government where officials are asked to swear loyalty 
not to our country or the Constitution but to the President himself, a 
country where truth is obscured or covered up or deemed fake simply 
because it is not flattering to the President and is not what he wants 
to hear.
  President Trump's decision to dismiss the DNI Director, the Director 
of National Intelligence, is particularly pernicious. Our intelligence 
community is an institution that is supposed to report on threats to 
our country with accuracy, without regard to politics, to speak truth 
to power, to protect us. For the President to install a yes-man at the 
top of the intelligence community, to politicize a part of our 
government designed to be apolitical, to so debase the morale of the 
brave men and women in the CIA and the NSA, many of whom risk their 
lives for our safety, is a disgrace.
  There are media reports that our intelligence community has found 
that Putin continues to engage in activities to influence the outcome 
of our election. That is reportedly what former DNI McGuire's team was 
briefing Congress about.
  So today, along with my Democratic colleagues on the Banking and 
Foreign Relations Committees, I am sending a letter to Secretary Pompeo 
and Secretary Mnuchin urging them to impose new sanctions on Putin and 
his cronies using existing sanctions authority. They have it; they can 
do it. Let me repeat that. The Trump administration has broad authority 
to impose sanctions for meddling in our elections. It does not need new 
legislative tools or approval.
  Our message is clear: Secretary Mnuchin, impose sanctions now.
  No one on the Intelligence Committee, Democrat or Republican, has 
disputed that Russia is attempting to interfere in our elections. Most 
say Russia has already started to do so. So this should be an easy, 
bipartisan effort. We are being attacked today in real time by foreign 
adversaries. This is not about party politics. It is not about what 
Trump doesn't want to hear. The Russians wanted him to win in 2016 and 
in all likelihood will want him to win in 2020. It is about the oath we 
swear to defend our Republic. Americans--I don't care what their party, 
what their ideology--if they start believing our elections are not on 
the level, this democracy will be in big trouble.
  I hope my Republican colleagues will join us. The administration 
could impose sanctions tomorrow, and it should. A repeat performance of 
2016--another campaign of foreign influence in our elections--is 
perhaps the greatest threat to our democracy. The Founding Fathers 
thought so. Read what James Madison said.
  We demand that Secretary Pompeo and Secretary Mnuchin identify and 
target all those determined to be responsible for ongoing election 
interference. Anything less would be an abdication of their 
responsibility, their sacred, solemn responsibility to protect and 
defend the United States from the serious threat to our national 
security and the integrity of our electoral process.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized.

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