On Thursday, House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) announced in The Atlantic he's introducing a bill that would make it mandatory to report attempted election interference by a foreign power.
[T]he Duty to Report Act would explicitly require candidates and campaigns to notify the FBI if anyone representing a foreign power offers dirt on that candidate’s opponents. More specifically, the legislation would make it a crime for candidates, their immediate family, or people involved with their campaign to fail to notify the FBI if any of them are told about, are offered, or receive in an unsolicited way nonpublic, materially significant information about another person running for the same office, when they know or recklessly disregard that the source is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power.
The bill would apply only when the information is about a candidate seeking the same office, both because that seems the likeliest scenario for foreign interference, and to avoid having the law to cover innocuous conversations people may have about contests in which they’re not involved. And I specified “know or recklessly disregard” to avoid leaving space for disingenuousness. What you know might be debatable, but if it walks like a spy, talks like a spy, and acts like a spy, you must assume that it’s a spy and act accordingly.
Rep. Swalwell explains while one might think codifying best practices would be unnecessary, what he has heard and seen over the course of the Russia investigation leads him now to know otherwise. From Donald Trump Jr.'s June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya to various Trump campaign officials and associates communicating with Russian nationals, Swalwell points out no one notifying the FBI did immeasurable damage.
Had anyone raised the alarm about this outreach, Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election might have been discovered and countered much earlier than they were. Instead, we are still picking up the pieces, and still vulnerable to foreign interference in our 2018 midterm elections.
Now that we have this knowledge, we have a responsibility to act on it so that this never happens again. To ignore this is to cede our democracy’s cornerstone—our free and fair elections—to our foreign adversaries. It was Russia supporting a Republican this time; it could be some other entity helping Democrats next time. This isn’t a partisan issue: No matter the players, it can’t be tolerated.
The congressman goes on to emphasize this is not a partisan issue.
This should be a no-brainer. This isn’t about Republicans and Democrats—it’s about Americans standing together to proclaim that they won’t accept foreign efforts to taint electoral politics. To resist such a joint statement is to contribute to the very divisions America’s adversaries seek to exploit in our society.
Holding office often requires swearing an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Running for office should include accepting responsibility for this, too, so that our democratic republic’s underpinnings can remain strong for generations to come.
Read the full piece: Reporting Foreign Meddling in Elections Shouldn’t Be Optional (The Atlantic)