J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Schumer unifies Democrats around Trump’s Russia sanctions inaction

Bruised by an immigration battle and government shutdown that has him under fire from the left, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday seized on a political gift offered up by President Donald Trump: inaction on Russia.

Schumer and his fellow Democrats didn't hesitate to hammer the Trump administration after it chose not to impose new sanctions against Moscow, which Congress mandated in bipartisan legislation passed overwhelmingly last year. After weeks of rising tension within their ranks over delicate talks on Dreamers and the budget, the minority spoke with one voice to slam Trump.


The timing of the sanctions announcement also offered Democrats the opportunity for a messaging counterattack as Republicans intensify their charges of bias among FBI officials probing Trump’s ties to Russia. The bipartisan sanctions law gave the Trump administration leeway to hold off on new penalties, but the decision to cite the law itself as a “deterrent” — without providing details of transactions with Russia’s defense sector that may have been deterred — inflamed Democratic suspicions.

Putting off the sanctions “is an extreme dereliction of duty by President Trump, who seems more intent of undermining the rule of law of this country than standing up to Putin,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday at a weekly press conference he devoted almost wholly to Russia sanctions.

“Instead of spending all of his time attempting to undermine the credibility of the FBI and waging an all-out assault on American institutions, the president should train his fire on the foreign adversary, Russia, that attacked us.”

No less than a half-dozen members of the Democratic Caucus joined him Tuesday in pressing the sanctions issue. Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) pressed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during previously scheduled testimony in the Senate Banking Committee, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) fired off a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson under her role as top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which supervises federal elections.

Mnuchin told senators that the administration's policy should not be characterized as "a delay" in sanctions, vowing to exert future penalties using the list of 96 Russian oligarchs that his department released Monday night in response to the sanctions law.

But Menendez, like many Democrats, continued to challenge the administration to explain why its mandated decision date on sanctions came and went with no new punishment for Vladimir Putin’s government.

“I don’t think the secretary or the administration can honestly look at me and say that there isn’t any third-party entity, whether a state sponsor or a private entity, that isn’t assisting… the Russians’ defense element,” Menendez said in an interview.

“And so, unless you can not only say that but prove that to me, then I think we have a problem as to the understanding of what that law is all about.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) publicly pressed Mnuchin to declassify elements of the oligarchs list, noting that the Treasury Department has acknowledged using a Forbes magazine list of wealthy Russians to compile the unclassified version of the roster.

“For the secretary of the Treasury to say he has fulfilled his duty under a sanctions law which requires that he hold Putin’s cronies responsible, and then he basically just pastes a page out of Forbes” is untenable, Wyden said.

Democrats’ pivot to Russia sanctions on Tuesday came as bipartisan talks continue without significant progress on a deal that can help young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers. They have little recourse to force the GOP’s hand on immigration, having scant interest in a rerun of this month’s three-day government shutdown. And they can’t simply make Trump implement the sanctions. But teeing off on his approach to Russia had the upside of putting their party on the same page.

“Democrats will continue to protect our democracy against foreign attacks and stand up to Republicans’ efforts to let Russia off the hook,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

The Trump administration on Tuesday defended its decision to hold off on Russia sanctions. A senior State Department official told reporters that its behind-the-scenes efforts using the looming threat of the sanctions law “have been able to turn off potential deals that equal several billion dollars.”

“And that is real success, it’s real money, and it’s real revenue that is not going to the Kremlin and is not going to Russia as part of the intent of this law and the intent of this administration, to remind Russia and remind the Russian government of the costs of its malign activity, specifically with regard to Ukraine,” the official said.

Congressional Republicans, for their part, were largely inclined to give the administration the benefit of the doubt.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said he was “encouraged by the diplomatic steps” being taken, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — a long-time Russia hawk — aligned himself with Corker’s perspective on Tuesday.

The Foreign Relations panel chairman, a chief author of the sanctions law, “seemed to feel that under the circumstances the administration did the right thing,” McConnell told reporters.

Victoria Guida and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.