GOP Senators Tell Contradictory Stories About Moscow Trip
ANDREW DESIDERIO at the Daily Beast
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-senators-tell-contradictory-stories-about-moscow-trip?ref=home
"SNIP........
A top Republican senator shocked his colleagues when he suggested, after returning from a trip to Moscow with fellow GOP lawmakers, that U.S. sanctions targeting Russia were not working and the Kremlin’s election interference was really no big deal.
Now, the senators who joined him for the series of meetings with senior Russian officials are sharply disputing not only Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) conclusions—but also his account of what went on behind closed doors in Moscow.
“I think the sanctions are hurting them badly both in terms of their pocketbooks and in terms of their status in the world,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who joined the congressional delegation last week, said in an interview. “I don’t want to over-state this, but these were very tense meetings.”
In public, the American lawmakers directly appealed to Russia for a better relationship. But in private, according to the senators who attended the meetings, they confronted their Russian counterparts over a host of issues, most notably Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
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