GOP Senators Tell Contradictory Stories About Moscow Trip
A key Republican came back from the Kremlin seemingly shrugging off Russian aggression. His colleagues are confused as hell by his talk. Inside a controversial mission to Moscow.
ANDREW DESIDERIO
07.10.18 2:33 PM ET
A top Republican senator shocked his colleagues when he suggested, after returning from a trip to Moscow with fellow GOP lawmakers, that U.S. sanctions targeting Russia were not working and the Kremlin’s election interference was really no big deal.
Now, the senators who joined him for the series of meetings with senior Russian officials are sharply disputing not only Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) conclusions—but also his account of what went on behind closed doors in Moscow.
“I think the sanctions are hurting them badly both in terms of their pocketbooks and in terms of their status in the world,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who joined the congressional delegation last week, said in an interview. “I don’t want to over-state this, but these were very tense meetings.”
In public, the American lawmakers directly appealed to Russia for a better relationship. But in private, according to the senators who attended the meetings, they confronted their Russian counterparts over a host of issues, most notably Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
That’s why Johnson raised eyebrows when, after returning from the nine-day trip with five of his fellow GOP senators, he suggested that the U.S. should evaluate whether the sanctions currently in place are successfully harming Russian interests because “you'd be hard-pressed to say that sanctions against Russia are really working all that well.” He also appeared to downplay the significance of election interference, saying it was “not the greatest threat to our democracy” and “we’ve blown it way out of proportion.”
His colleagues, who attended the same meetings with Russian lawmakers and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, had a different impression. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who led the congressional delegation, said in an interview that he and his colleagues told their Russian counterparts that “the worst thing you can do is try to meddle in our elections.” The senators differed on the effectiveness of sanctions, too.
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