President Trump is ignoring a legal requirement to punish Russia’s use of a chemical weapon to poison a former spy in the U.K., according to top lawmakers.
“We urge you to immediately impose the legally-mandated additional sanctions against Russia to hold it responsible for such brazen behavior,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel and Republican Texas Rep. Michael McCaul wrote in a letter released Monday.
Engel and other Democratic lawmakers routinely accuse the president of failing to take a tough line with Russian President Vladimir Putin, especially in light of Trump’s hesitance to acknowledge Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. But McCaul’s signature on the July 25 letter demonstrates bipartisan frustration that the administration has delayed a sharp rebuke of Moscow over the spy poisoning incident, which took place in March 2018.
“We are deeply concerned that sanctions have not been imposed on Russia as required by U.S. law stemming from Russia’s use of a chemical weapon against persons living in the United Kingdom,” they wrote to the White House.
Engel and McCaul released their letter amid reports that an arch Kremlin critic was poisoned while serving a 30-day prison sentence for encouraging protests against the government in Moscow. The opposition leader was returned to prison after receiving treatment for a “severe allergic reaction,” which his personal doctor and his attorney said was the result of being “poisoned by some unknown chemical substance” in jail.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a formal determination in August that Russia used a chemical weapon in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, the former Russian military intelligence officer and British double agent who was released to the U.K. in a 2010 spy swap.
That announcement triggered one round of sanctions under the 1991 law that implemented the international treaty banning the use of chemical weapons. Pompeo’s decision started a 90-day clock on a second round of sanctions to be imposed if Russia refuses to take any corrective steps, but the November deadline came and went without any Russian compliance or new punishments.
“The State Department continues to engage on the question of these and other sanctions diplomatically,” a diplomatic spokesperson said in February.
The second round of sanctions outlined in federal law would expand an already stiff suite of U.S. sanctions that have been imposed in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine and the 2016 election interference. The law calls for Trump to downgrade diplomatic relations with Russia and ban state-owned airlines from flying to the U.S., for instance, in addition to trade restrictions and efforts to target the Kremlin’s access to international loans.
Trump expelled 60 Russian diplomats from the U.S. in the wake of the Skripal poisoning as part of a wave of expulsions with European allies, though he was reportedly angered to learn that the U.S. booted dozens more than any other individual European country.
“While the CBW Act was designed to give the Executive Branch appropriate flexibility to craft the sanctions measures applied in each case, failure by the Administration to respond to Russia’s unabashed aggression is unacceptable and would necessitate that Congress take corrective action,” Engel and McCaul wrote.
