Campaign Action
With the Trump administration clearly not intending to do much to protect the 2020 election, House Democrats are once again pushing Republicans to pledge to not use hacked materials against opponents in the 2020 election.
Rep. Cheri Bustos, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is trying to get her Republican counterpart Rep. Tom Emmer to agree to ban the use of hacked materials. "There is no question that agents of the Russian government and other bad actors will attempt to infiltrate both the DCCC and NRCC to steal information for malicious use again in this upcoming election," Bustos wrote to Emmer. "As the heads of two major party organizations in our nation, we have an obligation to send a clear and unified message that Democrats and Republicans reject foreign interference in our elections."
This is the Democrats' third go at this agreement. In 2016 and 2017, Republicans basically ignored the requests. They considered it in 2018, but didn't follow through. Now that the Mueller report has made clear that an arm of the NRCC used hacked information from the Russian military intelligence "Guccifer 2.0" entity in a campaign, there is some heft behind the Democrats’ request. Republicans, thus far, are pooh-poohing the incident—not denying it, just saying the hacked information they used was public record, anyway.
So the Democrats' attempt to get their counterparts to agree not to "participate, aid or encourage hackers or foreign actors" or seek out stolen information, or use hacked or stolen information, or back any campaign that uses that information seems likely to be rebuffed. Because Republicans have to cheat to win, and they know it.