S. 1562: Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections Act
The House version of the Duty to Report Act has attracted one Democratic cosponsor, although a prior version attracted 24 cosponsors, all Democrats. It awaits a potential vote in the House Judiciary Committee.
The Senate version has attracted two cosponsors, both Democrats. It awaits a potential vote in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.
A comparable Senate bill called the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections (FIRE) Act, introduced by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), has not yet attracted any cosponsors.
He didn’t just notify the proper authorities once. On August 12, 2019, he submitted the following letter to the leaders of both Senate and House oversight committees.
Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff:
I am reporting an “urgent concern” in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(A). This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment.
In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.
• Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort. The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official interagency business. It is routine for U.S. officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another in order to inform policymaking and analysis.
He raised concerns previously, immediately after Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president on July 25, 2019. And the implication is he was aware of the highly suspect calls that Trump made to Putin thereafter. He didn’t spy on the calls, he didn’t spy on the content of the call,. He expressed concern on the way the “White House handled the records of the [Ukrainian] conversation.
He simply did his job as an honest, highly trained and competent member of our Nation’s security services. Stated another way, he acted to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States.
No “deep state” conspiracy ‘out to get’ Trump. No cabal of conspirators bent on impeachment. No Liberal campaign to frame the president for crimes he didn’t commit. No witch hunt. No hoax. No fake news. No alternative facts.
Just one civil servant employee in the national security division of government properly reacting and responding to intelligence provided to him in the course of his performance of his normal duties by other civil servants who are not leakers (contrary to some media squawkers and former government officials.) This is simply, on its face, the expressions of concern over threats to the most basic foundation of our democratic Republic by honest government employees to one another about specific horrifying behavior by individuals whose oaths of office should have foresworn them from those very behaviors. If for the facts that they are corrupt criminals, illicit lawyers, and venal political appointees and confidants of the president, who is himself a professional thug.
It is a scandal resulted from a clash of cultures. On the Right: The Republican culture of habitually indulging in cover-ups, lies, straw men, contempt for the rule of law, conspiracy theories, underhandedness, dishonesty, self-interest, deplorable swampiness, building a wall from those bricks to hide the Truth from the American people. On the Left: The Democratic culture of oversight, fact seeking, diligent investigation of outright crime, promotion of American Values,the belief that no one is above the law, truth telling, “government in the sunshine,” honesty, public servitude, honorable democratic government, tearing down walls of Republican secrecy to reveal to the American people the villainy of Trump’s government.
There can be no greater test of the destiny of our Republic than the one we are face-to-face with at this moment. What unfolds, who prevails will be the ultimate contest between a criminal approach to government by greedy men seeking personal enrichment and unchallenged power to ride roughshod over the traditions and norms of our democracy in effort to subjugate the people and accumulate personal wealth. And the representatives of the people devoted to serve the greater interest of all Americans by promoting individual rights over more powerful institutions and corporate interests within the aegis of their sworn oaths to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States from foreign and domestic bad actors so that life liberty and the pursuit of happiness develop and continue to the smallest among us, regardless of heritage, hue, and degrees of heathenness
. . .in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence (sic), promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . .
“Madam, we have a Republic, if we can keep it.” So be it.