Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am putting a hold on the Fiscal Year 2018 Intelligence Authorization Act, as currently drafted, for two reasons. The bill marked up by the Senate Intelligence Committee included three amendments I offered, one of which required that the Director of National Intelligence, working with the Department of the Treasury, produce a report on the threat to the United States from Russian money laundering. My first objection to the current version of the bill is based on a change to that provision which downgrades responsibility for the report and removes the Department of the Treasury. The critical importance of this issue to our national security requires the highest level responsibility within the intelligence community. It also requires the direct involvement of the Department of the Treasury to ensure that all the Department's financial intelligence resources, including those that fall outside the intelligence community, are brought to bear. My second objection, as I explained in my minority views to the bill in committee, is that it includes a provision stating that it is the sense of Congress ``that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.''' My concern with this language does not relate to the actions of WikiLeaks, which, as I have stressed in the past, was part of a direct attack on our democracy.…”