The Justice Department’s independent inspector general found that law enforcement officials had sufficient basis to open the Russia investigation and acted without political bias.
Last week, a sprawling report released by a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate panel covered three years of investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The report presented an extensive web of contacts between President Trump’s campaign advisers, Kremlin officials and other Russians, including at least one intelligence officer and others tied to the country’s spy services.
Brian Taylor is a professor of political science in Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Dr. Taylor specializes in Russian politics, comparative politics and security studies. He is the author of “The Code of Putinism” (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Dr. Taylor has extensive expertise on the Russian side of this issue, specifically about the methods of interference.
He offers his perspective on the recent report:
“The report of the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee was released a week ago and has already disappeared from the news. But the Committee’s findings matter greatly for our democracy. They show, once again, that Russia used multiple methods to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to weaken Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump, and that the Trump campaign welcomed these efforts and at times sought to coordinate with Russia-aligned figures. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia is now interfering in the 2020 election to attack Joe Biden and support Trump’s reelection. President Trump was impeached earlier this year for seeking Ukrainian interference in our elections and invited support from China as well. Speakers at the Republican National Convention should denounce foreign interference in our democracy and commit to not accepting information or assistance from foreign actors out to damage our elections.”
