Mueller calls Russian efforts to interfere with 2016 presidential election a serious challenge to democracy
Former special counsel Robert Mueller makes opening statement to the House Intelligence Committee.
Joe Scarborough went off on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Friday, accusing him of "aiding and abetting" Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to "subvert" American elections and even alleging a Russia-linked investment in Kentucky could be playing a part.
The "Morning Joe" segment was based on a new bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian election interference efforts. The report provided new details on how Russian government hackers "directed extensive activity against U.S. election infrastructure" -- and potentially identified vulnerabilities that they can exploit in upcoming elections.
Repeatedly calling him "Moscow Mitch," Scarborough fumed at McConnell, R-Ky., for acting "un-American" by not moving forward on election-security bills pushed by Democrats in the hours after Robert Mueller's testimony, including a bill to provide $775 million to enhance election system security, and a bill that would have required that campaigns report all offers of foreign assistance to the FBI.
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“I understand that there’s an oligarch that I have read is going to be setting up a big aluminum plant in Moscow Mitch’s home state. I don’t know if that’s it," he speculated.
"How can Moscow Mitch so willingly turn a blind eye not only this year to what his Republican chairman of the Intel committee is saying, to what Robert Mueller is saying what the FBI director is saying what the DNI is saying, to what the CIA is saying, to what the United States military intel community is saying?” he asked, claiming McConnell is "denying" Putin's interference.
"He is aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin’s ongoing attempts to subvert American democracy, according to the Republican FBI, CIA, DNI, intel committee. All Republicans are all saying Russia is subverting American democracy and Moscow Mitch won’t even let the Senate take a vote on it. That is un-American!" he screamed.
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The committee's partially redacted report also faulted the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for providing inadequate warnings to state governments. The panel found that alerts often went to the wrong people or contained insufficient information, and blended in with previous general warnings the states had received.
"DHS and FBI alerted states to the threat of cyber attacks in the late summer and fall of 2016, but the warnings did not provide enough information or go to the right people," the report stated. "Alerts were actionable, in that they provided malicious Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to information technology (IT) professionals, but they provided no clear reason for states to take this threat more seriously than any other alert received."
The report continued: "In its review of the 2016 elections, the Committee found no evidence that vote tallies were altered or that voter registry files were deleted or modified, though the Committee and IC's [intelligence community's] insight into this is limited."
Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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