Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday celebrating the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference amounted to a stunning display of shamelessness.

As part of Republicans’ broader effort to turn the page on the Mueller investigation as quickly as possible and portray Democrats who are unwilling to do as just out to get President Donald Trump, McConnell tried to shift blame onto the previous president. But in so doing, he completely absolved Trump — not to mention himself — from any share of responsibility.

McConnell, who arguably did more than anyone to prevent the Obama administration from providing a bipartisan warning about Russia’s interference efforts in the months before the 2016 election, mocked Democrats for “abruptly awakening to the dangers of Russian aggression.”

“Maybe stronger leadership would have left the Kremlin less emboldened,” McConnell said, referring to Obama. “Maybe tampering with our democracy wouldn’t have seemed so very tempting.”

Completely shameless -- @senatemajldr McConnell, who did more than anyone to prevent Obama from going public with concerns about Russian interference in 2016, is now on Senate floor mocking Dems for belatedly "awakening to the dangers of Russian aggression." pic.twitter.com/NEFMbURDi2 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 7, 2019

The irony is that it is McConnell, not Democrats, who seems to be having an abrupt awakening about Russia’s election interference.

McConnell prevented the federal government from warning the public about what Russia was up to in 2016

As the American intelligence community gathered evidence through the summer of 2016 that Russia was responsible for the hacks of Democratic targets that resulted in the WikiLeaks dumps, President Barack Obama’s administration briefed congressional leaders and sought to put out a bipartisan statement sounding the alarm about the Kremlin’s efforts.

But according to the Washington Post’s blockbuster 2017 report about how the Obama administration tried to handle the Russian effort, McConnell scuttled the White House’s plans, citing “skepticism that the underlying intelligence truly supported the White House’s claims” and concerns the administration was just playing partisan politics.

A bipartisan statement urging states to take cybersecurity precautions was ultimately released ahead of the 2016 election, but it didn’t single out Russia specifically or mention that the Kremlin was partnering with WikiLeaks (and, indirectly, the Trump campaign) in an anti-Hillary Clinton influence operation. Last year, Denis McDonough, Obama’s last chief of staff, said on Meet the Press that McConnell “dramatically watered down” the statement.

The Mueller report indicates that McConnell’s skepticism was unfounded and that the Obama administration was right — over the course of a 22-month investigation, Mueller established that Russia engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” influence campaign aimed at electing Trump.

Instead of owning up to the central role he played in preventing a warning to the public when it mattered the most, McConnell is now trying to shift blame and move on.

McConnell’s effort to do so was quickly condemned by his Democratic counterpart. Following McConnell’s speech, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the floor and accused him of “engag[ing] in an astounding bit of whitewashing.”

.@SenSchumer: "I have just listened to the Majority Leader engage in an astounding bit of whitewashing... It's sort of like Richard Nixon saying let's move on at the height of the investigation of his wrongdoing. Of course [McConnell] wants to move on. He wants to cover up." pic.twitter.com/JzaiNzNNPd — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 7, 2019

“It’s sort of like Richard Nixon saying ‘let’s move on’ at the height of the investigation of his wrongdoing,” Schumer said, noting that McConnell “sure acted differently a few years back.”

“What I remember is that from the very beginning the Republican leader has not taken the threat of Russia’s election interference as seriously as he should,” Schumer added. “In the run-up to the 2016 election, when the Obama administration sought to warn state election officials about foreign meddling and designate election systems as, quote, critical infrastructure, Leader McConnell reportedly delayed for weeks, watered down the letter from congressional leaders, and pushed back against the designation. Yeah, I’d want to sweep this under the rug if I’d did that.”

McConnell also misled about what the Mueller report actually says

McConnell misrepresented what the Mueller report says about collusion, claiming that Mueller found “nothing to establish the fanciful conspiracy theory that Democratic politicians and TV talking heads had treated like a foregone conclusion” that there was a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

While Mueller did not establish that a conspiracy existed, we already knew that the campaign was aware Russia was trying to help them — not from runaway speculation about what the special counsel would find, but from Donald Trump Jr.’s email correspondence about the June 2016 meeting between top Trump campaign officials and a Kremlin-connected lawyer who promised them dirt on Hillary Clinton. And with regard to the Russian hacks that culminated in the WikiLeaks email dumps, the Mueller report concludes that “the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian effort.”

McConnell and other Republicans want to turn the page from Mueller as quickly as possible, Schumer is not the only leading Democrat who indicated that’s not going to happen. Late Tuesday morning, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spent about 20 minutes reading parts of the Mueller report into the congressional record, along with a letter from more than 600 former federal prosecutors arguing that Trump would be prosecuted for obstruction of justice if he wasn’t president.

Warren concluded with a call for the House to begin impeachment hearings.

.@SenWarren concludes with this: "This is not about politics. This is about the Constitution. We took an oath not to try to protect Donald Trump, we took an oath to protect the Constitution. And the way we do that is we begin impeachment proceedings now against this president." pic.twitter.com/hs7HJOMCfg — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 7, 2019

“This is not about politics. This is about the Constitution,” she said. “We took an oath not to try to protect Donald Trump, we took an oath to protect the Constitution. And the way we do that is we begin impeachment proceedings now against this president.”

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