Obama aide says McConnell hurt ’16 election security plan

WASHINGTON — A former chief of staff to President Barack Obama said Sunday that the Senate’s top Republican insisted that a bipartisan appeal for states to step up election security in the face of Russian aggression be “dramatically watered down” before it was issued in advance of the 2016 election.

Denis McDonough said on NBC’s Meet the Press that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was single-handedly responsible for downgrading the language in a letter “asking the states to work with us” to better secure election systems in light of intelligence indicating that Russia was attempting to interfere in the election. McDonough complained that members of Congress have shown a “stunning lack of urgency about this question,” and he put the blame mostly on Republican leaders in Congress.

“The lack of urgency that we saw from the Republican leadership in 2016, we continue to see to this day today,” he said. “It’s beyond time for Congress to work with the administration, to work with the states, to ensure that our electoral systems are ready to go. This is not a game.”

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart accused McDonough on Sunday of having a selective memory. At the time, Stewart pointed out, the administration did not want to publicize the Russia connection, and McDonough even wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that he had asked Democrats to avoid calling out Russia publicly “mainly to avoid politicizing the issue.”

“Give me a break,” Stewart added.

The exchange highlights a testy, ongoing standoff between Democratic and Republican lawmakers presently at odds over who should be held responsible for Russian interference in the election: Obama, who was president at the time, or President Donald Trump. The intelligence community has concluded that the Russian meddling had been aimed at aiding Trump’s campaign.

None of the three congressional panels looking into Russian intervention has released a bipartisan plan for how to strengthen election security, even though the 2018 primary season begins in some states this month. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating Russian intervention, is expected to release recommendations later this month, though that will not mark the end of its probe.

In the House, meanwhile, lawmakers are expecting that the GOP majority will soon wrap up the intelligence panel’s investigation of Russian meddling — allowing members to better focus on exploring how Obama’s Justice Department handled investigations of a slew of matters, including the Clinton email probe and a 2010 uranium deal that let Russia assume a controlling stake in a company operating in the United States.

Several Republican lawmakers have suggested that those matters require a second special counsel to examine them. On Sunday, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the outgoing chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, seemed to inch toward joining their ranks.

“I think we’re trending perhaps towards another special counsel,” Gowdy, who is also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News.

UAE INFLUENCE

Investigators working for the first special counsel, Robert Mueller, have turned their attention to the United Arab Emirates, questioning whether the UAE bought political influence with Trump during the presidential campaign, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

The investigators have questioned George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who was a back-channel negotiator with Syria during President Bill Clinton’s administration. He became an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates and last year was a frequent visitor to Trump’s White House.

Trump has closely allied himself with the UAE, embracing its strong support for the new heir to the throne in Saudi Arabia, as well as its confrontational approaches toward Iran and neighbor Qatar. In the case of Qatar, which is the host to a major U.S. military base, Trump’s endorsement of a UAE- and Saudi-led blockade against that country has put him openly at odds with his secretary of state — as well as with years of U.S. policy.

Nader, 58, made frequent trips to the White House during the early months of the Trump administration, meeting with Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner to discuss U.S. policy toward the Persian Gulf states in advance of Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia last May, according to people familiar with the meetings. By some accounts, it was Bannon who pushed for him to gain access to White House policymakers. Others said Kushner backed him.

Reached by phone last month, Nader said he had dinner guests and would call back. He did not, and attempts to reach him over several weeks were unsuccessful. Nader’s lawyer did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The investigators have asked about Nader’s role in White House policymaking, those people said, suggesting that the special counsel investigation has broadened beyond Russian election meddling. A 37-page indictment last month alleged that Russian operatives working for the Internet Research Agency used fake social media accounts and onthe-ground political organizing to exacerbate divisive political issues in the U.S.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an NBC News interview airing Sunday that Russia will “never” extradite any of the 13 Russians targeted by the indictment, even as he insisted they didn’t act on behalf of his government.

The U.S. has no extradition treaty with Russia and can’t compel it to hand over citizens, and a provision in Russia’s constitution prohibits extraditing its citizens to foreign countries.

“Never. Never. Russia does not extradite its citizens to anyone,” Putin said.

Even if the Russians never face justice in the United States, the sweeping indictment served the added purpose of increasing the public’s awareness about the elaborate foreign campaign to meddle in American democracy, legal experts have said. For years, the Justice Department has supported indicting foreigners in absentia as a way to shame them and make it harder for them to travel abroad.

Yet Putin argued that his government has little to answer for until the U.S. provides “some materials, specifics and data.” He said Russia would be “prepared to look at them and talk about it.”

“I know that they do not represent the Russian state, the Russian authorities,” Putin said. “What they did specifically, I have no idea.”

Information for this article was contributed by Karoun Demirjian of The Washington Post; by Mark Mazzetti, David D. Kirkpatrick and Maggie Haberman of The New

York Times; and by Josh Lederman of The Associated Press.