Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) insisted over the weekend that Russian "don't come in your office" to offer stolen campaign information -- even though Russians had met with Trump officials at Trump Tower to offer "dirt" on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, as was meticulously documented by Robert Mueller in his report.
Kennedy made the remarks while appearing on NBC's Meet the Press.
"Should it be a crime to use stolen material from a foreign adversary in a campaign?" host Chuck Todd asked the Republican senator.
"If you make that a crime, you still got to show intent," Kennedy argued. "You know, when the Russians spy on you or the Chinese or the North Koreans, they don’t come into your office and say, 'Hey, we’re from Russia, China or North Korea and let me talk to you.' I mean, they’re very clever. So if you’re going to pass a law, you’ve got to be able to — you’ve got to require criminal intent."
"You’re telling me should it be improper or even a crime?" Todd asked
"Yeah," Kennedy, who spent the last 4th of July holiday in Moscow with seven other Republican congressmen, agreed. "For me to use in a Senate race material offered by China or North Korea or Argentina for that matter or Venezuela, yeah, I’m willing to look at that, but you’ve got to show intent."
He added: "Generally, when they send you this stuff in a campaign, if Russia — to my knowledge Russia’s never sent me anything in a campaign, but if they did, I know they’re not morons, they’re not jelly heads they’re not going to walk in and say, hi, I’m from Russia, I’ve got some information for you."
In fact, Kennedy's description bares a remarkable resemblance to the Trump Tower meeting that occurred between Russians and members of the Trump campaign in 2016.
