Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues and to associate myself with their remarks on the critically important issue of unlimited and unaccountable money in our political system. I would like to thank my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, for organizing this speaking series and for being a national leader on the issue of campaign finance reform.

While my colleagues make important points about how our rigged campaign finance system can and does serve as a channel for anonymous billionaires and special interests to exert undue influence across our political system, I would like to focus my remarks on a related issue: how our broken campaign finance system also threatens our national security.

There is no serious dispute that malign foreign actors like Russia are working to subvert our democratic processes and sow chaos in our political system. As we have seen, their strategies depend not on direct conventional attacks upon our Nation, but an asymmetric approach that exploits the existing divisions and vulnerabilities of our open society, our democratic institutions, and our free markets.

Even though we are now aware of this, we have not taken the necessary steps to repair the situation. Indeed, our Nation retains a campaign finance system that empowers anonymous donors to funnel unlimited amounts of money to influence public policy at every level of government, and to hide their actions behind corporations.

This misguided system, which fell into place in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, allegedly has been exploited by foreign adversaries to advance their agendas on our soil.

How does this threat work? Prior to Citizens United, an incorporated entity did not have the same right as a flesh-and-blood human being to make contributions and expenditures in elections. This distinction makes sense. Corporations typically are permanent legal entities. They can amass outsized sums of wealth and, critically, they can shield the human beings behind them from scrutiny and liability. It is easier for those who wish to circumvent the laws protecting our democratic system to do so from behind a corporate mask. Thus, when the Supreme Court gave corporations the right to make unlimited independent expenditures in elections, it also opened the door for those who wish to hide their election spending to cover their tracks with shell companies and other entities that only exist on paper.

Our Nation historically has sought to safeguard our system of government from foreign influence. The Constitution requires the President to be a natural-born citizen. Early lobbying disclosure reforms were crafted with the threat of foreign propaganda in mind. And it remains a Federal crime for a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to spend money to influence our elections. But how can we know that authorities have the tools they need to enforce the law consistently when the law permits donors to funnel unlimited sums into elections and cover their tracks with shell corporations?

There are serious allegations that foreign actors have taken advantage of this vulnerability in our system. CNN reported in early April that Special Counsel Mueller is investigating whether Russian oligarchs used donations to think tanks, political action committees, and straw donors to cover their illegal campaign spending in the 2016 cycle.

One figure who is suspected of this type of malign influence-peddling is Alexander Torshin. Torshin is the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia, a close Putin ally, and was recently sanctioned by the Trump administration, along with other oligarchs and high-ranking Russian Government officials. Multiple press reports stemming from documents turned over to congressional investigations by Trump campaign associates detail how Torshin allegedly cultivated people associated with the NRA to influence the 2016 election. His ultimate goal allegedly was to arrange a meeting during the campaign between then- Candidate Trump and Putin. Press reports indicate that the FBI is currently investigating whether Torshin illegally funneled money to the NRA to assist the Trump campaign in particular.

Indeed, if Russia did use the NRA to circumvent public scrutiny of its electoral meddling, it would have been following the same pattern as the Koch network. Robert McGuire from the Center for Responsive Politics stated: ``We've seen some of the groups in the Koch network give large, six and seven figure grants to the NRA--knowing that the NRA is going to spend the money on ads in an election. . . . The Russians could easily have funneled money into the NRA coffers using a similar pathway. . . . A legal, ostensibly apolitical donation to the NRA by Russia could have freed up other restricted funds to spend on politics.''

While money is fungible, it is quite striking that the NRA spent over $30 million to assist the Trump campaign--two-and-a-half times more than what it spent in 2012 to assist Mitt Romney.

These allegations regarding links between Russia and the NRA are among the most widely reported, but there is evidence of other instances where Kremlin-linked oligarchs and their allies allegedly directed money into American elections. For example, Viktor Vekselberg, another close Putin ally and oligarch who made billions from a government-sanctioned oil deal, allegedly funneled over $250,000 through a U.S. corporation run by his cousin to spend on the 2016 election. The cousin had no prior history as a major political donor before the last election cycle. Vekselberg was also recently sanctioned by the Trump administration for his close ties to Putin and alleged role in advancing Russia's malign influence activities. Special Counsel Mueller is also reportedly investigating whether Vekselberg funneled money into the 2016 election.

These are two illustrations of how those from Putin's inner circle may have sought to influence our elections. Some of these methods may appear legal because the source of the money on paper was a person who is legally allowed to make expenditures on American elections. But experts, like Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, doubt that these sums could have entered our political process without approval from the Kremlin. As she puts it: ``If you have investments in Russia, then you cannot be sure that they are secure if you go against the Kremlin's will. You can't be an enormously rich person in Russia, or even hold large holdings in Russia, without being in Putin's clutches.''

If sophisticated special interest groups in our country rely on dark money to pursue their political agendas, and the Kremlin and Kremlin- linked actors can exploit this vulnerability, then it stands to reason that other foreign actors can also manipulate our system. As long as we maintain a system wherein a political spender can be a corporation that received money from another corporation, which, in turn, received money from yet another corporation, there will be no accountability in our campaign finance system.

Even if it cannot be proved that illegal campaign spending is changing electoral outcomes, I believe it is unacceptable for our Nation to knowingly permit an open conduit for foreign meddling in our elections, which has an effect on our national security. Our system of government depends on public faith that election results reflect the will of the American people.

Going forward, I intend to speak further on this topic and work on ways to give authorities much stronger tools to prosecute the laundering of foreign money in our campaign finance system. In my view, this is not just an administrative or an election issue; this is a national security and international criminal issue, and as such, there should be investigations and prosecutions on that scale. I invite my colleagues to work with me on this important issue, and I thank my colleagues again for highlighting the need to take unaccountable money out of our politics.

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