House Dems ask Ryan to intervene on Russia documents

A group of top House Democrats is appealing to Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for help in obtaining records from the Trump administration related to the Russian attacks against 21 state election systems in 2016. 

The six Democrats, who serve as ranking members of congressional committees, say they’re trying to recruit Ryan’s help because they’ve exhausted all their other options. 

“Our goal is to obtain the documents collected and prepared by our federal agencies about these Russian attacks in order to take concrete steps to prevent them from happening again,” they wrote in a letter to Ryan on Tuesday. {mosads}

“Unfortunately we are being blocked by Trump Administration officials who refuse to produce these documents to Congress and by Republican Chairmen who refuse to demand them. These actions create the unfortunate perception that House Republicans do not want to obtain these documents relating to the Russian attacks against state election systems,” they added.

A top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official revealed during an appearance on Capitol Hill in June that Russia had targeted election-related systems in 21 states leading up to the 2016 presidential election, while declining to identify which states were impacted for confidentiality purposes. DHS has repeatedly said there is no evidence that any votes were changed.

In January, the Democrats recounted in their letter how they pressed DHS for specific information about the affected 21 states, including “the names of the state officials or offices that were notified.”

The Democrats additionally describe their multiple attempts to wrestle the documents from DHS, saying the law enforcement agency repeatedly produced unsatisfactory responses to their requests.

In one case, they said the agency turned over 50 pages of documents to the lawmakers about Moscow’s meddling that largely “consisted of publicly available documents.”

“To our knowledge, the Trump Administration has not provided any Committee in the House of Representatives with these classified documents about Russian-backed attacks against state election systems,” they wrote.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, first began asking DHS to provide such information in October. He later appealed to Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) for help him with his efforts, but Gowdy did not respond, according to the letter.

“It is inexcusable the Republican leaders in Congress have done so little to investigate — or address — Russian-backed attacks on our states, despite the fact that we have been asking repeatedly for congressional action on this important matter,” the lawmakers write.

“We have exhausted our efforts at the committee level and we ask that you now personally intervene to protect the integrity and authorities of the House of Representatives to obtain the documents we need to protect our nation against foreign attacks,” they said in their appeal to Ryan.

Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) of the House Judiciary Committee, Adam Schiff (Calif.) of the House Intelligence Committee, Bennie Thompson (Miss.) of the House Homeland Security Committee, Eliot Engel (N.Y.) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Robert Brady (Pa.) of the House Administration Committee joined Cummings on the letter.

The chairmen overseeing their respective committees were carbon copied on the letter.