Trump’s denial of Russian meddling is a national security threat, Democratic report finds

A damning new report released Wednesday by congressional Democrats says President Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election poses a direct threat to national security, by making the U.S. vulnerable to it happening again.

The 206-page report, commissioned by Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations’ ranking member, details Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decades-long assault on democracy around the world as well as the risks of the U.S. president being in denial.

“[T]he current president of the United States has barely acknowledged the threat posed by Mr. Putin’s repeated attacks on democratic governments and institutions, let alone exercised the kind of leadership history has shown is necessary to effectively counter this kind of aggression,” the report states. “Never before in American history has so clear a threat to national security been so clearly ignored by a U.S. president.”

Numerous intelligence reports since January 2017 have concluded that Russia clearly influenced the election, in part by hacking the personal email accounts of numerous political leaders. But Trump’s focus on Russia has been dominated by repeated praise of Putin and denying his campaign colluded, while only superficially acknowledging the results of the intelligence findings about election meddling.

While the U.K., Germany, France, and Spain have all publicly decried Russian meddling and have taken active steps to prevent it from happening in the future, the report notes that the U.S.’s “lack of presidential leadership in addressing the threat Putin poses has hampered a strong U.S. response.”

“Despite the clear assaults on our democracy and our allies in Europe, the U.S. government still does not have a coherent, comprehensive, and coordinated approach to the Kremlin’s malign influence operations, either abroad or at home,” the report states.

Though unclear if related to the release of the report, Trump bashed those looking into his campaign’s involvement with Russia, tweeting Wednesday that “everybody including the Dems knows there was no collusion, & yet on and on it goes.”