Senators Warn About Continued Russian Meddling

The bipartisan heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee are warning that Russia is now trying to interfere in the politics of European countries. The committee chairman, Richard Burr (R-NC), and the panel’s ranking member, Mark Warner (D-VA), say Russia is taking the tactics it used to meddle in the U.S. presidential election and amplifying them.

The Intelligence Committee holds a rare, open hearing on Thursday:

"Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns."

The aim of the hearing is to "provide a foundational understanding of Russian active measures and information operations campaigns." (Watch live)

"An outside, foreign adversary effectively sought to hijack our most critical democratic process: the election of a president," Senator Warner told reporters. “In that process decided to favor one candidate over another, and I can assure you they didn’t do it because it was in the best interest of the American people.”

Senator Burr said the Intelligence Committee’s investigation is vital ahead of next month’s French presidential election. "What we might assess as a very covert effort in 2016 in the United States, is a very overt effort, as well as covert, in Germany and France, already been tried in Montenegro and the Netherlands," Burr told a packed room of reporters at the Capitol. “So we feel part of our responsibility is to educate the rest of the world about what’s going on, because it’s now in character assassination of candidates.

Burr and Warner say they have asked 20 people to testify in their Russia investigation, including President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top advisor Jared Kushner and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The senators report they have seven staffers examining thousands of pages of raw intelligence, because they say the scope and breadth of their investigation is unprecedented.

On the other side of the Capitol, the House of Representatives investigation into Russian interference in the election remains stalled. Democrats on the committee continue to call on Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) to recuse himself from the probe for allegedly working with the White House, instead of committee members.

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-- Matt Laslo

(Photo Credit: Kremlin / Public Domain)