House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that special counsel Robert Mueller should be allowed to finish his investigation into Russia’s interference in the US election…
House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that special counsel Robert Mueller should be allowed to finish his investigation into Russia’s interference in the US election — and that he would be open to slapping more sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“I have been clear from day one, he should be allowed to finish his investigation and carry out his work, nothing has changed,” Ryan said, a day after President Donald Trump slammed the special counsel and his probe while standing side by side with Putin at a joint news conference in Helsinki’s Presidential Palace.
The Wisconsin Republican mentioned Mueller’s Friday indictments of 12 Russian spies charged with hacking Democrats’ and Hillary Clinton’s emails and disseminating them and other damaging information on phony social media accounts they created.
“You saw the indictments from the special counsel. They were the people that conducted this cyberattack on our elections,” he told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.
“We had put in place sanctions. If the Foreign Affairs Committee or Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee think that there are other sanctions that we have not placed upon Russia, I’m more than happy to consider those,” Ryan said, stopping short of calling for more sanctions himself.
Ryan also forcefully condemned Putin’s denials of interference, indirectly taking a swipe at Trump, who said he found them credible.
“I’ve told you what I think about Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin does not share our interests. Vladimir Putin does not share our values. We just conducted a year-long investigation into Russia. They did interfere in our elections,” he said.
“It’s really clear. There should be no doubt about that. We passed tough sanctions on Russia so that we can hold them accountable.”
Ryan cut the president some slack, however, for his oft-stated desire to improve relations with Russia — but warned that the US and Russia do not have common interests.
“I understand the desire and the need to have good relations. That’s perfectly reasonable. But Russia is a menacing government that does not share our interests and our values. That should be made very, very clear,” he said.
And he was adamant over his own belief that Russia meddled not only in the US election but in other countries’ as well.
“Russia did meddle with our elections. Not only did Russia meddle in our elections, they’re doing it around the world. They did it to France, they’re doing it to the Baltics. Russia is trying to undermine democracy itself to delegitimize democracy,” he continued.
And unlike the president, Ryan warned that Russia would do it again and must be stopped.
“More importantly, what we intend to do is to make sure that they don’t get away with it again and also to help our allies, to help those democracies, those new and older democracies in the world who are going to be facing this Russia again — this Russia aggression again. We need to make sure we can equip them with the tools they need to stop this,” Ryan said, adding that he had not spoken to the president since his much-maligned remarks in Finland.
