Romney calls for response ‘of like magnitude or greater’ to Russia hack

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called for a response to a cyberattack on U.S. government systems on Sunday, and said that Russia should face consequences for its alleged involvement.

During an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” the GOP senator echoed concerns raised by other members of his party about the hack, which affected systems at the Treasury and Commerce departments, among others.

“What Russia has done is put in place a capacity to potentially cripple us in terms of our electricity, our power, our water, our communications,” the senator said.

“This is the same thing you can do in a wartime setting, so it’s extraordinarily dangerous, and an outrageous affront on our sovereignty and one that’s going to have to be met with a strong response,” Romney continued, adding: “Not just rhetorical, important as that is, but also with a cyber response of like magnitude or greater.”

Asked about President Trump’s tweets contradicting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other U.S. officials and suggesting China’s possible involvement, Romney responded that Trump had a well-known “blind spot” related to Russia.

His remarks are some of the strongest among Republican elected officials in response to the president’s handling of the cyberattack, news of which broke last week. The president has largely remained focused on his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in recent days, while commenting on the hack a handful of times.

“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!),” the president tweeted on Saturday, before suggesting a baseless theory involving Chinese intrusion into U.S. voting machines.