Schumer Floor Remarks On Calling For An All-Senators Briefing On The Threat Putin’s Interference Poses To Our Elections Following Reports That Trump Administration Officials Are Withholding And Misrepresenting Intelligence Findings To Help The President’s Political Image

Washington, D.C.—Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding the need for an in-person, all-Senate intelligence briefing on the Trump Administration’s relationship with Russia. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

According to a whistleblower complaint filed by a former senior official in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, political leaders at DHS told him to refrain from sharing reports about Putin’s efforts to interfere with our elections because they “make the President look bad.”

And this DHS whistleblower goes on to allege a broader pattern by President Trump and his lieutenants of politicizing and misrepresenting intelligence, altering the information to fit the president’s way of thinking—what the president thinks makes him look good.

We know this President doesn’t like to hear the truth. He literally can’t handle it. But what’s even more alarming is that former DNI Director Dan Coats, according to Bob Woodward’s new book, could not shake his “deep suspicions” that Vladimir Putin “had something” on the President. Many Americans believe what Director Coats said—that the reason President Donald Trump bows down in obeisance to Putin is because Putin knows something that the president doesn’t want made public.

That’s how egregious the pattern of President Trump’s behavior has been. It cries out for an explanation, and there is no logical one. There’s no honorable one. His pattern, President Trump’s  pattern of downplaying the threat from Putin, placating the dictator, and pursuing policies that have long been the goal of Moscow asks an enormous question: what does President Putin know that President Trump is so afraid of?

So here’s what needs to happen. Before we leave the election, there must be an all-Senators briefing on the threat from Putin to our election. Every Senator—Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, North, South, East, and West—has an obligation to our constituents and the country we all love to find out what exactly Putin is up to.

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