As we continue to pick apart Robert Mueller’s findings, and debate the meaning of “obstruction of justice,” remember his undisputed warning:

The Russians will mess with next year’s election, just like they did in 2016.

“It wasn’t a single attempt,” the former special counsel just reiterated to members of the House, of this attack on our democracy. "They are doing it while we sit here.”

So here is the question we should be focused on now: Why is Mitch McConnell sitting on bills to fortify our defenses?

The simple answer is Donald Trump, and the Senate Majority Leader’s subservience. But darker possibilities loom. We’ll get to those in a minute.

First, what we know already: The president sees any attempt to tighten election security as a tacit suggestion that his election win in 2016 was illegitimate. And if Trump doesn’t approve of something, McConnell won’t even let the Senate vote on it.

“Because I get to decide what we vote on,” he said. That’s why.

McConnell’s also made clear that his own political goals come first. What matters most is winning, not the fundamental tenets of our democracy.

This, he’s demonstrated again and again: By celebrating the system of shameless gerrymandering that, on balance, favors his own party, or the big money pumped into our elections by anonymous donors; by wresting control of the Supreme Court through any means necessary, or pushing through hundreds of unelected judges.

Now McConnell says he is blocking the mostly bipartisan security measures to safeguard our elections because Democrats are trying to give themselves a “political benefit.” That’s rich.

These are bills to require candidates to notify the FBI if a foreign entity offers help, mandate the use of paper ballots or better fund the Election Assistance Commission. Hardly partisan stuff.

But if foreign hackers want to interfere and give his own party an unfair advantage, McConnell’s position seems to be, more power to them.

Look a bit deeper, though, and you’ll find other unseemly explanations -- the perks “Moscow Mitch” gets from Russian oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin, who dump money into GOP campaigns and his home state.

Like Oleg Deripaska, the Kremlin ally behind the world’s second-largest aluminum company, called Rusal. The Treasury Department accused this tycoon of aiding Russia’s misdeeds, and put sanctions on him and his company as punishment for the hacking of our 2016 election.

The oligarch then paid lobbyists to campaign on his behalf, until Trump’s Treasury Department agreed to lift the sanctions. Most Republicans in the House voted with Democrats against this move to ease the punishment, and many Republicans in the Senate strongly agreed.

But McConnell put the kibosh on that resistance, and sided with Deripaska’s campaign to keep the money rolling in.

So the Trump administration did proceed to lift its sanctions on Rusal, which is now investing hundreds of millions in building a new plant in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky; one that promises to create hundreds of jobs. Go figure.

McConnell responded angrily yesterday to the suggestion that he is a Russian asset: “The people who push such unhinged smears are doing Putin’s destabilizing work for him,” he tweeted last night.

But whether he was moved by the generosity of rich Russians, or the voting machine lobbyists who oppose creating paper trails for digital election systems, the end result is the same: He is doing Putin’s bidding.

He is endangering our democracy, by refusing to make our elections safer. “Our adversaries are relentless,” FBI director Christopher Wray warned last week, echoing Mueller. And Putin knows better than to rely on just one puppet.

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