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September 10, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 156 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

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Election Security (Executive Session); Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 156
(Senate - September 10, 2020)

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[Page S5529]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Election Security

  Mr. President, finally, according to a whistleblower complaint filed 
by a former senior official in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis 
at the Department of Homeland Security, political leaders at DHS told 
him to refrain from sharing reports about Putin's efforts to interfere 
with our elections because ``they make the President look bad.'' And 
this DHS whistleblower goes on to allege a broader pattern by Trump and 
his lieutenants of politicizing and misrepresenting intelligence, 
altering the information to fit the President's way of thinking, what 
the President thinks makes him look good.
  We know this President doesn't like to hear the truth. He literally 
can't handle it. But what is even more alarming is that former DNI 
Director Dan Coats, according to Bob Woodward's new book, could not 
shake his ``deep suspicions'' that Vladimir Putin ``had something'' on 
the President.
  Many Americans believe what Coats said; that the reason Donald Trump 
bows down in obeisance to Putin is that Putin knows something that the 
President doesn't want made public.
  That is how egregious the pattern of President Trump's behavior has 
been. It cries out for an explanation, and there is no logical one. 
There is no honorable one. President Trump's pattern of downplaying the 
threat from Putin, placating the dictator, and pursuing policies that 
have long been the goal of Moscow asks an enormous question: What does 
President Putin know that President Trump is so afraid of?
  Here is what needs to happen. Before we leave for the election, there 
has to be an all-Senators briefing on the threat from Putin to our 
election. Every Senator--Democratic, Republican, liberal, conservative, 
North, South, East, and West--has an obligation to our constituents and 
the country we all love to find out what exactly Putin is up to.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois