Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Friday that Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and intent to get involved in this year’s midterm elections “has been clear to everyone” except President Trump.
“It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the Russian oligarchs,” Sanders said in a statement.
“It is absolutely imperative that the Mueller investigation be allowed to go forward without obstruction from the Trump administration or Congress,” he continued.
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Sanders’s statement comes on the heels of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment Friday of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for allegedly interfering in the 2016 election.
The charges allege that Sanders was one of the candidates that Russians sought to support during the campaign. Sanders, an Independent senator who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, did not address his campaign being mentioned in the charges against the Russians.
Overall, the special counsel’s office alleges that Russians interfered in the 2016 election with the aim of helping Trump’s campaign and hurting Hillary Clinton, the eventual Democratic nominee.
It also alleges that some defendants, while posing as U.S. people, communicated with “unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”
Democrats have said the indictments disprove Trump’s past claims that Mueller’s probe is a “witch hunt,” while Trump on Friday responded to the charges by claiming “the Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!”
“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted,” Trump asserted.