Schumer brands McConnell’s fiery speech to move on from Russia investigation as 'despicable'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer attacked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s speech to move on from the Russia controversy after Robert Mueller’s report as “despicable.”
McConnell gave a scorching floor speech on Tuesday, accusing Democrats of rooting for a “national crisis” for political gain and appealed to lawmakers to move on from the Russia controversy now that the Mueller report showed no collusion, declaring the issue “Case closed.”
MCCONNELL RAILS AGAINST MUELLER REPORT POLITICS IN BLISTERING FLOOR SPEECH: ‘CASE CLOSED’
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“This investigation went on for two years. It is finally over. Many Americans were waiting to see how elected officials would respond,” McConnell said.
“With an exhaustive investigation complete, would the country finally unify and confront the real challenges before us? Would we finally be able to move on from partisan paralysis and breathless conspiracy theorizing? Or would we remain consumed by unhinged partisanship and keep guiding ourselves to the point that Putin and his agents need only sit on the sidelines and watch us as their job is actually done for them? Regrettably the answer is pretty obvious.”
Despite the pleas for bipartisanship, the speech was met with fury among Democrats, with Schumer assailing McConnell in an interview on MSNBC, saying “what Leader McConnell did today on the floor was nothing short of despicable.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“To say that it’s over, case closed, when we haven’t even begun to investigate the report and Mueller hasn’t testified – and it’s who Mueller knows what the report says, not Barr’s spin on that report – to not see the underlying documentation and how deeply Russia affected things and what they might do in 2020. For McConnell to do this, for Trump to do this is despicable,” he said.
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“For McConnell to run away from this – he’s done a lot of very, very bad things, but this is one of the most despicable,” he continued.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“For McConnell to run away from this – he’s done a lot of very, very bad things, but this is one of the most despicable.”
“We have bipartisan bills ready to go forward… that would stop the Russians from interfering in large part in our elections,” Schumer added. “He won’t even let there be a debate on them. That’s a disgrace.”
In the same speech on Tuesday, McConnell slammed his Democratic colleagues for extending the political battle over the Russia case and suggested that they actually wanted Mueller to find illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“They seemed to be hoping for a national crisis for the sake of their own politics,” he said.
He also went on to accuse the Obama administration let Russia “get away with almost anything” and said that Democrats are “angrier at [Attorney General] Bill Barr for doing his job than they are at Vladimir Putin.”
Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.