The White House opposed a Republican-led push earlier this year to create an executive-branch task force to battle Russia’s covert information operations, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.

Sen. Tom Cotton, a leading GOP defense hawk who has long urged President Barack Obama to take a harder line on Russia, sought to force the White House to create a panel with representatives from a number of government agencies to counter Russian efforts "to exert covert influence," including by exposing Russian "falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations.”


But the administration rejected the call, saying in a letter to Congress that hasn’t been released publicly that the panel would duplicate existing efforts to battle Russian influence operations — an argument Cotton rejects.

His proposed task force drew bipartisan support as part of a larger intelligence authorization bill that passed the House but never got a floor vote in the Senate. The panel would not have been set up in time to have had an impact on Russia’s role in last month’s presidential election — even if the intelligence bill had become law. But the Arkansas senator said in an interview the White House’s dismissal of his proposal is symptomatic of the administration’s lax pre-election attitude toward Russia.

The dispute is part of the larger partisan blame game over Russia’s meddling in the presidential election, with Democrats accusing Republicans of going soft on Russia, even as the GOP accuses Obama of finally stirring to action only after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election.

“Vladimir Putin is KGB. He always has been, and he always will be,” Cotton said. “President Obama seems to realize that now.”

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, shot back: “It’s awfully rich for Republicans in Congress to accuse us of not taking this seriously. We’ve long been ringing alarm bells, and, in the case of the election hacking, it was Republicans in Congress that opposed an effort for bipartisan shows of solidarity.”

The official was referring to White House efforts ahead of the election to get support from congressional leaders for a bipartisan statement on Russia cyberintrusions — an effort that fell apart after several Republicans raised objections, as The Washington Post first reported.

Cotton said he plans to put forward his provision again next year as part of the annual intelligence authorization bill. It’s the kind of measure that could produce friction between congressional Republicans — who are traditionally hostile to Russia — and President-elect Donald Trump, who has praised Putin and pledged to foster closer ties between Russia and the United States.

And Democrats are hoping to use that divide to drive a wedge between the new White House and the GOP, by forcing votes on a number of Russia-related issues, including a measure making it harder for Trump to roll back sanctions put in place after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Cotton, for his part, made clear he is not wavering in his hard-line views on Russia — and that he thinks Trump will come around on the issue.

“I believe that the president-elect will take seriously the threat that Russia poses and also deal with them from a position of strength, which has been lacking for eight years,” he said.

His task force measure would have set up an interagency committee made up of high-level officials from the Defense Department, State Department, FBI, and other security and intelligence agencies. The goal would have been to take action to stop Russia's covert efforts to influence the United States and other countries, going after Russian "media manipulation," "covert broadcasting," establishment of front groups, "funding agents of influence" and other activities, according to the legislation.

Cotton said the Obama administration made no attempt to work with him to amend the provision and instead opposed it outright.

“It’s disappointing but not surprising that the White House opposed this provision and other provisions in the intelligence bill designed to counteract Russian influence,” Cotton said. “They claimed that they already had such mechanisms in place to identify and counteract Russian covert and espionage operations, but in my opinion those mechanism have clearly been inadequate given the kinds of actions we’ve seen here in the United States, including the hacking of the DNC.”

The senior administration official said the White House opposed the measure “not because we didn’t prioritize the threat, but because it called for an unnecessary structure that would have been duplicative of what we already had in place.”

Cotton and other GOP defense hawks have argued for years that Obama should do more to counter Russia, with Cotton saying in the interview that a tougher stance over the past eight years could have prevented not just the hack of the Democratic National Committee but also the crisis in Syria and the aggression in Ukraine.

Democrats, though, argue that Republicans talked tough on Russia when they were in the opposition but are now going soft in deference to Trump.

A number of Democrats — along with Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — are pushing for a select committee to investigate Russia’s election interference. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said an expanded probe is unnecessary, pointing to existing investigations being conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee and other panels.

“Recent reports of Russian interference in our election should alarm every American,” McCain and Graham said in a joint letter to McConnell on Sunday with incoming Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Cybersecurity is the ultimate cross-jurisdictional challenge, and we must take a comprehensive approach to meet this challenge effectively,” they wrote. “Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to address this unique challenge.”