WASHINGTON: Democratic lawmakers accused President Donald Trump on Thursday of giving Russia the green light to interfere in the 2020 US presidential race, while a top Republican ally said Trump was wrong to say he would accept political dirt from foreign sources.
The uproar followed televised comments in which the US president told ABC News he would be willing to listen to such damaging information about political opponents as he seeks re-election.
“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump said in an interview aired on Wednesday.
“It’s not an interference. They have information, I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong.”
Trump’s comments came less than three months after Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted a report that found Russia waged a hacking and influence campaign to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Democratic lawmakers roundly condemned the remarks. “What the president said last night shows clearly, once again, over and over again, that he does not know the difference between right and wrong,” said US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress.
While some 2020 Democratic presidential candidates renewed their call to impeach the president, Trump’s comments did not seem to move House Democrats who have been on the fence closer to initiating impeachment proceedings.
Trump’s statement drew a rebuke, however, from one of his closest allies in Congress, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
“I think it’s a mistake,” said Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
He accused Democrats of having accepted damaging information from foreign nationals on political opponents and said any public official contacted by a foreign government with an offer of help to their campaign should reject it and inform the FBI.
House of Representatives Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he was confident Trump was speaking hypothetically. Others prominent Republicans were outspoken in their discomfort, without naming Trump.
“It is never appropriate to allow a foreign government or its agents to interfere in our election process. Period,” said Republican Senator Mike Rounds.
Mitt Romney, a senator and former Republican presidential candidate, said it was “unthinkable” to accept adverse information on a political opponent from a foreign source. “It would strike at the very heart of our democracy,” he said.
Senate Democrats failed on Thursday to ram through legislation requiring US presidential campaigns to report to the FBI offers of help from an agent of a foreign government. The move was blocked by Republicans who control the chamber.
Senator Mark Warner, who pushed the legislation, recalled Trump’s “Russia, if you are listening” call for Moscow to dig up Clinton’s missing emails during the 2016 campaign.
“The President has given Russia the green light to interfere in the 2020 election,” Warner wrote on Twitter earlier.
’Thing of value’
Any foreign contribution of “money or other thing of value” violates US campaign finance law. Legal experts say knowingly soliciting information from a foreign entity would also be illegal.
In a statement on Twitter prefaced with the comment: “I would not have thought that I needed to say this,” Federal Election Commission Chair Ellen Weintraub warned political campaigns not to accept foreign help, saying it risked putting them “on the wrong of a federal investigation.”
An FBI counterintelligence investigation of Russian election activities in the 2016 presidential election sparked Mueller’s probe, which confirmed US intelligence agencies’ findings that Russia worked to help Trump win.
Mueller, whose investigation examined a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that Trump’s campaign had with Russians promising dirt on Clinton, did not charge Trump campaign staff who attended the meeting.
Trump defended his remarks in a flurry of tweets on Thursday morning in which he said it would be “ridiculous” to report his contacts with foreign leaders to the FBI.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee expressed alarm at Trump’s comments.
“The president has either learned nothing in the last two years or picked up exactly the wrong lesson — that he can accept gleefully foreign assistance again and escape the punishment of the law,” Representative Adam Schiff said.
Democratic presidential candidates who renewed calls for Trump’s impeachment included US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand and US Representative Eric Swalwell.
“A foreign government attacked our 2016 elections to support Trump, Trump welcomed that help, and Trump obstructed the investigation. Now, he said he’d do it all over again. It’s time to impeach Donald Trump,” Warren said.
Democrats: Trump comments give green light to foreign election meddling
Democrats: Trump comments give green light to foreign election meddling
- Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted a report that found Russia waged a hacking and influence campaign to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election
Pakistanis fleeing Iran describe strikes shaking ground under their feet
- Nearly 1,000 students, businessmen and pilgrims have fled Iran since the war started out of a total 35,000 Pakistanis in the country
QUETTA: Pakistanis fleeing Iran described explosions and missile strikes across Tehran shaking the ground under their feet and engulfing buildings in fire and smoke in a city emptied of many of its residents. The conflict has widened sharply, with a US submarine sinking an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka on Wednesday and NATO air defenses destroying an Iranian missile fired toward Turkiye.
Governments have been scrambling to evacuate stranded citizens, with most of the region’s airspace closed due to the risk of missiles hitting passenger planes.
“I was in the classroom when a powerful explosion rocked our university building,” Hareem Zahra, 23, a student at the Tehran University of Engineering, told Reuters after crossing Pakistan’s land border with Iran.
“We saw thick smoke coming from many buildings on fire,” she said, adding Tehran was under attack until the moment she left.
TEHRAN LOOKED DESERTED
Nearly 1,000 students, businessmen and pilgrims have fled Iran since the war started out of a total 35,000 Pakistanis in the country, Mudassir Tipu, Pakistan’s ambassador to Tehran, said.
“There are now serious challenges. As you know there is no Internet in most parts of Iran,” he said. Iran has retaliated with a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting Israel and Washington’s allies in the Gulf, including Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, following US and Israeli air strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
Tehran has looked deserted since the conflict began, said Nadir Abbas, 25, a student of Persian literature at a university in the Iranian capital.
“I saw a drone hit a basketball court where six girl players lost their lives.”
Reuters could not verify his account.
DESTRUCTION EVERYWHERE
Islamabad is walking a diplomatic tightrope as it attempts to maintain warming ties with Washington while expressing solidarity with Iran.
Pakistan is home to the second-largest Shiite population in the world after Iran and being drawn into the conflict could lead to instability at home as well as complications evacuating its citizens.
“The first attack happened right next to my hospital,” said Sakhi Aun Mohammad, a student at Tehran University of Medical Sciences. After he reached the border, an Iranian friend called to check if he was safe, saying: “’Thank God, you have gone to Pakistan, all of you are safe, but your hostel has been attacked’.” A Pakistani diplomat who is still in Tehran said attacks took place every four or five hours, adding one missile struck a building next to his office. “At times you will feel as if something exploded right at your feet,” he said. “The last time I got out was at night. Buildings had collapsed, some others were on fire. There is destruction everywhere.”
He added: “It is almost like a ghost town.”
