Ben Cardin Quotes

The one thing that the president continues to diminish, which I think is unfortunate, is the fact that the Russian government, at the highest level, deliberately interfered with our election in 2016, and according to all of our experts in the intelligence community, they are coming back with more force in 2018 and 2020.

Americans cannot afford to turn a blind eye to Russian interference in our democracy. We need to get to the facts and learn lessons to prevent future misconduct by foreign governments.

The Intelligence Community Assessment concluded first that President Putin directed and influenced a campaign to erode the faith and confidence of the American people in our presidential election process. Second, that he did so to demean Secretary Clinton, and third, that he sought to advantage Mr. Trump.

I think that Russian meddling in the election is an important issue.

The day after the Republican convention ended, there was another political bomb that was dropped on the U.S. presidential election [2016] from Russia. The day after the Republican convention ended, right before the Democratic Convention began we got what U.S. intelligence agencies believed to be the next big Russian incursion into our election. We got the first WikiLeaks dump.

The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections - theirs and other people's.

Donald Trump, for years, had been working with the Russians. He brought people on his campaign who had ties to the Russians.

Obviously, we shouldn't be having any American officeholder or any American candidate looking for foreign nations to come in and be involved in U.S. elections.

Full disclosure: the Russians did not tell Hillary Clinton, 'Don't go to Wisconsin.'

We do need to get to the bottom of what Russia did and their interference in the election. And we need to also figure out how the Obama administration failed so miserably to allow Russia to have this type of impact in our country.

Regardless of President Trump's involvement, the unredacted portions of Mueller's report make it clear - Russia carried out a coordinated campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election and undermine our democracy.

I do not have any firsthand knowledge of foreign interference in the 2016 election.

I think it's important for people to believe their elections are on the up and up and they aren't being tampered with by anyone, and in this particular instance there's a large body of evidence that at a minimum Russia tried to tamper with our election.

As we know the KGB is all over this election [2016].

The Russians sought to interfere with the election process - that the cyber hacking that took place by the Russians was part of that campaign, and that they had a clear preference in terms of outcomes.

The Russians didn't hack the DNC servers. The Russians didn't interfere in the election [2016]. And if you get a Democrat in the know to sit down and honestly tell you off the record, they'll admit it.

We are at this moment where what concerns me is that we're all so caught up in Donald Trump, James Comey, and David Kushner, and Mike Flynn, that it's in danger of overwhelming the real story, which is what the Russians did and tried to do. I contend that it was the most serious attack on our country since September 11, 2001. It was deliberate, it was sophisticated, it was conscious, and it was in some ways successful.

WikiLeaks is a lot of things. This past year, WikiLeaks was a tool of Russian intelligence and the Russian government and their interference operation against the American presidential election to benefit Donald Trump.

We know that the Russian's interfered in our election and they did it to benefit President Trump. The intelligence agencies confirmed that.

This [British] dossier is still considered to be mostly uncorroborated but it's overall allegation is that the Trump folks knew, the [Donald] Trump folks knew about the Russian campaign to interfere in our election, they supported it, they cooperated with it, and in exchange, they made promises to the Russians.

We've got [evidence] of direct Russian government connections with the [Donald] Trump campaign, during the campaign, while the Russian government was interfering in our election to try to elect Trump.

I have never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States.

[Donald Trump] said, "Maybe the Russians could find those [Hillary Clinton's] emails - and if the Russians find 'em, please give them to the media." Well, I don't know how you get there from here, but the media then reported that Trump was encouraging the Russians to hack the Hillary campaign and produce the evidence to the media.

We know for a fact the Russians tried to change the outcome of our election, attacking the very fundamental of democracy. We know they did that. We need to know how, we need to know why, and most of all we need to know what to do to prevent this kind of activity, which they continue to carry on in free nations around the world.

I am deeply convinced that no interference from the outside, in any country, even a small one, let alone in such a vast and great power as the United States, can influence the final outcome of the elections. It is not possible. Ever.