RPT - US Democrats Call For Sanctions On Russia Over Alleged 2020 Election Interference - Letter

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th February, 2020) US Senators Chuck Schumer and Sherrod Brown are urging the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Russia following reports alleging that the country is meddling in the 2020 presidential election, a letter published on Monday showed.

"We urge you to immediately and forcefully impose sanctions on the government of the Russian Federation, any Russian actors determined to be responsible for such interference, and those acting on their behalf or providing material or financial support for these election interference efforts," the senators wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Russia has repeatedly refuted accusations of meddling in US elections, calling the allegations baseless.

The list of Russian officials who the senators said should be designated includes Russian President Vladimir Putin. Schumer and Brown noted that the US Congress has provided the administration with a broad range of sanction tools through the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), a bill signed into law in 2017.

As the senators demanded new sanctions on Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Facebook has been unable to substantiate claims that Russia is involved in any inauthentic activity in the run up to the 2020 vote.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told the newspaper that the company investigated a claim made by an independent researcher over suspicious content in support of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

But the investigation yielded no evidence to substantiate the researcher's claims, Stone told the Wall Street Journal.

The Kremlin's presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denounced recent allegations of Russian interference in the 2020 polls as "paranoid" assessments that have "nothing to do with the truth."

The US Congress passed CAATSA in 2017 response to allegations that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 US presidential election, despite Moscow's insistence that it never meddled in any American vote.

On January 29, 2018, the United States began imposing sanctions on foreign companies under CAATSA targeting major transactions made with the Russian defense or intelligence sector.

Russian officials have repeatedly said Russia does not interfere in the US political system and have insisted that the allegations of collusion were made up to excuse the election loss of Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton, as well as deflect public attention from instances of election fraud and corruption.