On the recordFebruary 25, 2020
I am glad Senator Whitehouse made that distinction with respect to the Mueller report. It is true that they did not find a criminal conspiracy, meaning they did not find some agreement between the Trump campaign and the Russians to interfere, but they found plenty of evidence of the Trump campaign's welcoming the intervention from the Russians. Of course, we have more recently seen President Trump spreading the conspiracy theories that were launched by Vladimir Putin that it was not the Russians who interfered in the 2016 elections: Oh, my God. It was the Ukrainians who interfered in the 2016 elections. There is this famous videotape now of Vladimir Putin's saying: Thank God, they are not blaming the Russians anymore. They are blaming the Ukrainians. Translation: Thank God our propaganda is working, and even the President of the United States and some Members of the House of Representatives are parroting our conspiracy theory, the ones that we cooked up. It is really alarming that a foreign government--someone like Vladimir Putin--is so successful in spreading its misinformation within our system.
