The main purpose of the two congressional investigations into the Russian campaign to interfere in America's electoral process is to prevent such a campaign from ever happening again. There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about future reoccurrences. Just today, Facebook closed 30,000 accounts in France, ones it determined were spreading misinformation in the run up to the French election. So these malevolent efforts by foreign governments to interfere in the democratic processes of important Western powers continue and remain a serious threat to sovereignty and security of the United States.

As policymakers forge an appropriate response to this ongoing threat, the Republican National Committee has a particularly important role to play in future efforts to protect this part of America's homeland. For as we've learned in recent weeks, the RNC was at the center of two of the most important components of the Russian campaign – the penetration of Trump's campaign by the Russian government, and the normalization and use of Russian disinformation.

Let's take a deeper look at these troubling events:

The Republican Party's platform and Carter Page. There are various versions of this story floating around, but what we know now is that during the run-up to the GOP convention, the Trump campaign made only one significant change in the draft party platform: watering down the party's commitment to providing "lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army to combat Russian-backed separatists, changing the language to "providing appropriate assistance." This was a change that would have been pleasing to the Russian government of course, and even at the time seemed like an odd place for Team Trump to make their only stand.

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One of the Trump staffers who helped make this change was Carter Page. Yes, this is the same Carter Page whom we've now learned the U.S. intelligence community began monitoring with a top secret FISA warrant in the summer of 2016. Page and his activities are now at the very center of the FBI's and congressional Russia investigations, and there is a very high likelihood that this change in Republican Party platform was part of Russia's successful efforts to influence domestic politics here in the U.S.

Given the gravity of this possible penetration of one of the most important responsibilities of an American political party by a foreign government, one imagines that the RNC has conducted an extensive investigation into this worrisome event in order to ensure that it never happens again. The results of this investigation should be shared with the public and the congressional committees investigating the Russian campaign against the U.S.

The Republican Party and its use of Russian disinformation. In recent weeks the public has learned a great deal more about how extensive the Russian disinformation campaign was last year. And just yesterday, the new CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, once again confirmed that Wikileaks acted on behalf of Russia last year and warned that people promoting its materials could be doing the bidding of a hostile foreign power.

It is one thing for a candidate like Donald Trump to knowingly use disinformation spread by a hostile foreign power in an election. No one can stop that. But it was another matter altogether when the Republican Party itself not only failed to condemn the use of this material, as Marco Rubio asked them to do, but made the use of this material central to their entire general election strategy. RNC Chair Priebus and Press Secretary Sean Spicer commented on these releases daily and in doing so gave permission to every Republican in the nation to join in. (Here is just one example.)

There was little doubt that this material was coming from the Russian government. As Paul Ryan recently said, "We all knew this before the election. We all knew Russia was trying to meddle with our election." The CIA briefed Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell about the Russian campaign in September. In a U.S. News column published in October, I called on the RNC to renounce their use of these materials and encourage others to join them in doing so. DNC Chair Donna Brazile formally asked RNC Chair Priebus to stop using the materials on three separate occasions. All three times he refused.

So to be clear – the Republican Party of the United States knowingly used materials provided by a hostile foreign power in an American election. It continued to use these materials for months after it was known they were coming from Russia, and for months after they were asked to stop using them by the Democratic Party and even other Republican leaders. It is my own belief, having studied these Russian "active measures" for some months now, that it was the daily use of these materials by the RNC that was the single most important step in mainstreaming their use. Thus the RNC and its leaders were not just complicit in one of the most malevolent foreign intelligence operations to have ever taken place on U.S. soil, but were critical to its success.

Going forward, it is critical that the two American political parties work side by side with DHS, the FBI and others to ensure that future attacks on our democracy are thwarted and repelled. It will require creative and far-sighted leadership from the Trump administration to successfully launch and lead such a process, one that is certainly a new and challenging part of protecting the homeland. We will be able to draw on the experience of our allies in Europe who've also been targeted by Russian interference campaigns. Just this week the U.S. along with our allies established a new center to combat "hybrid war" and disinformation based in Finland that will be a critical piece of our go-forward strategies. It was an encouraging step.

But these efforts can only succeed if our American political leaders act like patriots and not craven partisans. The new leader of the RNC, Ronna Romney McDaniel, has a particularly important role to play now. Given what we've learned, she needs to acknowledge the mistakes the GOP made this past cycle and that her own party's platform process was hacked by a foreign power; commit that a reoccurrence of the RNC's aiding a foreign interference campaign will not happen again on her watch; and pledge to work with new DNC Chair Tom Perez and the relevant parts of the United States government to stand up a new early warning and comprehensive response system. The Republican Party must make a clear stand now against these kinds of interference campaigns here in the U.S. and abroad. There simply cannot be any daylight on these matters between the two parties any longer. Failure to do so is an invitation for Russia and other foreign actors to try again. It is the very opposite of patriotism.