Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, as those who are following on C-SPAN have probably noted, we are not overwhelmed with business on the floor of the U.S. Senate, nor have we been during the course of this year.

We have considered several bills--you could count them on one hand-- including the Defense authorization bill, and, of course, the momentous, historic legislation 2 weeks ago, the tax treaty with Luxembourg, which had been pending before the U.S. Senate for 9 years. It finally made it to the floor of the Senate. That was the highlight of the week, as we have watched the U.S. Senate ignore some of the most important issues of our time.

Let me tell you one that strikes at the heart of our democracy, which we should be focused on today and until it is resolved. Last week, former FBI Director and Special Counsel Bob Mueller testified before the House Judiciary Committee about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The hearing clarified several important things. For example, President Trump loves to claim that the Mueller report completely exonerated him. Trump's tweets, one after another, talk about how he was exonerated by that report. Director Mueller made clear that is ``not what the report said.''

When asked by the House Judiciary chairman ``Did you actually totally exonerate the President?'' Director Mueller answered ``no.''

President Trump likes to say the Mueller investigation was a witch hunt. He has said that about 1,000 times. But the investigation actually led to 37 indictments and over $42 million in assets forfeited to the government. If this were a witch hunt, it certainly found a lot of wealthy witches.

Some Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee tried to attack Director Mueller's credibility, but Mueller has a lifetime record of being a straight shooter, by-the-book investigator, and prosecutor. He did this country a service when he took on the role of special counsel.

One thing Director Mueller tried to remind the American people of is the reason the investigation was necessary. He said:

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.

Mueller went on to say: ``This deserves the attention of every American.''

One of the most important takeaways from the Mueller report is that Russia did successfully attack our democracy in 2016. Page 1 of the Mueller report says: ``The Russian Government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.''

The report detailed numerous examples, including an ``intelligence- gathering mission'' that employees of the Internet Research Agency, known as the IRA, took in June of 2014.

The IRA was the Russian troll farm that waged information warfare against the 2016 election by using stolen identities, fake social media accounts, and fake campaign events.

The Mueller report and the earlier indictment of several IRA employees noted that two of the Russians arrived in the United States for a 3-week trip ``for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform the [IRA's] operations.''

The report also detailed the Russians' attack on my own home State board of elections. In July 2016, the Illinois State board of elections discovered that it was the target of a malicious, month-long cyber attack that enabled the intruder to access confidential voter information and view the registration data of approximately 76,000 voters in my State of Illinois.

These efforts to influence the election and attack campaign organizations and State and local election administrators and vendors continue to this day. What are we going to do about it?

What has been the response so far of the U.S. Senate, the body sworn to uphold the Constitution and to protect against enemies, foreign and domestic? Nothing. We are too busy with the trade treaty with Luxembourg to deal with Russian interference in our elections. In the face of Russia's threat to our elections, this Senate has been quiet as a graveyard.

Let's start in 2016. Top officials from the administration's national security and intelligence community came and warned congressional leadership of Russia's ongoing attack on our elections, rightly asking for a bipartisan statement to tell Russian dictator Putin to stop. What was Senate Majority Leader McConnell's response to this obvious request to protect our Nation? He said: No thanks. I am not going to do it.

History will no doubt look back in infamy at that decision.

What about the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a historically recognized body with key jurisdiction over Russian attacks on the United States? That committee did not even conduct an investigation into Russia's actions in the last Congress.

Republicans were silent when Trump repeatedly accepted Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's brazen denials over American intelligence experts and all of the evidence to the contrary.

They were silent again after the Mueller report's devastating findings of Russian interference. And they were silent when President Trump subsequently said he would gladly accept election help from a foreign power again.

Now look at the current Congress. Several bipartisan bills have been introduced to respond to this Russian threat, including the Election Security Act. This is a critical, comprehensive bill that would provide States with much needed resources and establish a robust Federal effort to protect our democracy.

Unfortunately, Republican Senate Leader McConnell is blocking all efforts to bring this important legislation to the floor for a debate and vote. This legislation could thwart Russian interference in the 2020 election. Senator McConnell refuses to bring it to the floor.

I end with the questions I have asked before here on the floor: How can the party of Ronald Reagan continue to sit by while this President pursues policies aligned with the former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin? Why didn't the first bills in this new Senate under Republican control deal with this threat to the election process in our democracy? Why isn't the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holding urgent hearings on these stunning dalliances between an American President and a Russian dictator? Why isn't the Senate Foreign Relations Committee moving bipartisan legislation that would protect U.S. membership in NATO?

Quite frankly, we barely do anything in this legislative graveyard of the Senate under Republican control. You would think we would at least focus, on a bipartisan basis, on making certain that the outcome of the next election is not influenced by a foreign power, whether it is Russia or some other malicious force in the world today.

But because it bruises the President's ego and it may invoke a nasty tweet, the Republican-controlled Senate prefers to do nothing. It is time for the Republican majority to stop protecting President Trump at all costs.

There reaches a point when the Senate Republican leadership needs to put the country before fear of the President's tweets.

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