A group of senior House Democrats want the FBI to investigate whether Donald Trump’s campaign has coordinated with the hackers who stole the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
“Elections are the bedrock of our nation’s democracy and a model we hold out to the world, so we must counter any foreign or domestic efforts to threaten the integrity of our electoral process,” the lawmakers — Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, Michigan Rep. John Conyers, New York Rep. Eliot Engel and Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson — said in a Friday statement.
Democrats have worried about foreign interference in the election ever since Democratic National Committee emails were leaked on the eve of the Democratic convention, causing the ouster of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Last week, the Obama administration formally blamed the hacks on the Russian government, but that didn’t stop the leaks. WikiLeaks has produced tranches of emails, over the past several days, apparently taken from John Podesta’s account.
“Troubling new evidence appears to show that the Trump campaign not only was aware of cyber attacks against Secretary Clinton’s campaign chairman, but was openly bragging about it as far back as August,” said the lawmakers, who serve as the top Democrats on four powerful committees.
They pointed the finger at Roger Stone, who was fired from the Trump campaign in 2015 but continues to give advice to the GOP nominee, based on Stone’s statement that he has a “backchannel” to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his recent prediction that Podesta would come under scrutiny. “Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel,” Stone tweeted in August.
Stone has denied that the prediction had anything to do with WikiLeaks. “This is the new McCarthyism,” Stone told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
But Democrats don’t believe that. “For months, we have been asking the FBI to examine links between the Trump campaign and illegal Russian efforts to affect our election, including interviewing Trump advisor Roger Stone,” Cummings and company said. “In light of this new evidence — and these exceptional circumstances — we call on the FBI to fully investigate and explain to the American people what steps it is taking to disrupt this ongoing criminal activity.”
The FBI has already investigated one major party nominee, but Director James Comey’s decision not to recommend that Hillary Clinton be indicted after agents found classified information on her private email server angered Republicans and, reportedly, agents within the bureau. “No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute — it was a top-down decision,” a source involved with the case told Fox News.
Secretary of State John Kerry hopes that blaming Russia publicly will deter future attacks, but he also promised that the United States will retaliate for the cyberhacks. “[W]e will and can respond in ways that we choose to at the time of our choice,” he said Monday.
