Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro on Friday said he thinks President Donald Trump wants Russia to interfere on his behalf again in 2020, after special counsel Robert Mueller reported that Moscow sought to boost him in 2016.
“I bet he’s hoping they’re going to do it again in 2020,” Castro said of Trump in an interview on MSNBC. “It’s incumbent upon Congress to help ensure that we do everything that we can to get to the truth that the Mueller report tried to lay out and also hold this administration accountable to make sure that we do take steps to secure our 2020 election.”
The White House did not immediately respond for a request for comment.
Trump has not put forth a specific plan to address Russian interference in future U.S. elections. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday said the administration “takes election meddling very seriously” and knocked President Barack Obama’s handling of the issue in 2016.
The former San Antonio mayor’s remarks came shortly after the president told reporters he had an hour-long phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier Friday, during which Trump said the leaders did not discuss Moscow’s interference in the last election.
Trump said the pair did talk about Mueller’s investigation, which found insufficient evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
“He said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and ended up as a mouse,” Trump said.
The conversation is the first known communication between Trump and Putin since a redacted version of Mueller’s report was released to the public several weeks ago. Sanders said the president did not condemn Russia’s 2016 interference during the call because he’s “been clear that no one needs to meddle in our election.“
“The president’s made to clear to everybody,“ the press secretary told reporters. “Every person that’s not an American person has no business in our election. We’ve said it a lot, and we’re actually doing things to prevent everybody from meddling in our election. Something the other administration failed to do.“
Castro — who called for Congress to launch impeachment proceedings after Mueller’s report did not reach a verdict on whether Trump obstructed justice — claimed the president was attempting to “slow-walk any kind of accountability” for Russia’s efforts to intervene in U.S. politics.
“All of a sudden, he’s willing to take the word of a leader like Vladimir Putin who, time and again, has shown himself to be adversarial to the United States and to be dishonest,” he said.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/03/julian-castro-russian-election-intereference-2020-1301226
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Katie Galioto
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