Arizona senator John McCain criticized President Obama’s response to Russian attempts to influence the presidential election and doubled down on calls for a congressional select committee to investigate the Kremlin’s involvement.
“So far we’ve been totally paralyzed. I’m sure that when Vladimir Putin was told ‘Cut it out,’ I’m sure that Vladimir Putin immediately stopped all cyber activity,” McCain said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
During a press conference Friday, Obama said that he told Putin in September to “cut it out” over the Kremlin’s politically motivated hacking. Obama has since ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full review of election-related hacking from 2008 onwards.
“The president has no strategy and no policy as to what to do about these various cyber attacks that have possibly disrupted an American election,” McCain said. “They are hacking every single day in other areas of our military and all kinds of different aspects of American life that they are able to penetrate, and we have no strategy, nor do we have any policy towards that. It’s very disturbing.”
He reiterated calls for a congressional select committee to investigate the hacks. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell suggested last week that such a panel is unnecessary.
“We need a select committee,” McCain said. “We need to get to the bottom of this.”
President-elect Donald Trump has doubted the CIA’s reported conclusion that the Kremlin engaged in cyber activity meant to sway the election in his favor. The Washington Post reported Friday that the FBI and the office of the Director of National Intelligence share the CIA’s assessment.
