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WASHINGTON – Republicans in the House of Representatives on Thursday rejected negotiations with the Democrats over a deal that would have prevented both sides from using pirated or stolen equipment during the election campaign this fall.
The leaders of the National Republican Congress Committee, the House Republicans campaign arm and their counterparts from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have been working for much of the summer on a set of rules that would govern the processing of material committees like thousands of pages of damaging democratic documents stolen and disclosed by Russian hackers in 2016.
Instead, both parties met Thursday to exchange gunshots just two months before polling day; Republicans claimed that the Democrats had negotiated in bad faith and violated an agreement not to speak publicly about the negotiations, and the Democrats insisted that the Republicans were simply looking for an excuse to withdraw. It has once again revealed the difficulties faced by Washington lawmakers in the two years since Russia launched a brazen attack on the American political system.
"The negotiations are about trust. Once this trust is broken, there is simply no way to reach an agreement, "said Matt Gorman, spokesman for the Republican Committee. "We do not need to commit to doing what we already planned to do. And we will certainly not be a pawn in the advertising shot of someone.
House Republicans "are not looking for pirated materials," Gorman said. "We do not want any pirated materials. We do not intend to use pirated materials.
Democrats have given harsh words, accusing Republicans of negotiations at the slow march before pulling the plug on the basis of a benign press interview.
"We were clear from the first day that the D.C.C.C. will not use pirated material stolen for political purposes, and has been negotiating in good faith for three months to obtain the N.R.C.C. on the same page, "said New Mexico representative Ben Ray Luján, chairman of the Democratic Committee. "The N.R.C.C. has unnecessarily delayed and made an excuse after the other, and I am incredibly disappointed that they have withdrawn from this commitment not to use stolen pirated material. It is a sad day for our democracy.
The two sides were about to reach an agreement last week or so, according to officials involved in the negotiations who requested anonymity to openly discuss the talks. But the main difference of opinion remained as to how to handle pirated or stolen material that had entered the public domain through news or other sources. Republicans argued that such material should be a fair game and that asking candidates not to enter the information was unnecessarily prohibitive. The Democrats retorted that any agreement would be toothless without such a provision.
As late as Tuesday night, the Democrats proposed a draft agreement that would have required both committees to commit not to "use known information stolen or pirated, to promote or disseminate pirated material to the press, whatever the source. according to an official familiar with the latest version.
Other project provisions included a commitment not to contribute to piracy efforts, to not search for pirated or stolen material, and to report any contact with foreign actors to law enforcement authorities.
But Republicans felt that the Democrats had repeatedly tried to get them into a premature agreement and that Mr. Luján had finally violated the terms of the negotiations when he told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that both parties were hoping to announce the final terms this week. (Republican committee representative Steve Stivers of Ohio publicly acknowledged the negotiations at an event in June.)
Without agreement, parties will have to more or less define their own standards, as they have done in previous election cycles. External political lobby groups, which are expected to spend tens of millions of dollars on home runs this fall, would not have been subject to the pledge.
The question is hardly hypothetical. In addition to the more publicized intrusions into the Democratic National Committee, Russian actors in 2016 hacked the computer servers of the Democratic Campaign Committee of Congress and shared thousands of pages of stolen information about candidates with bloggers and journalists. Their efforts seemed to target competitive races in states including Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina.
Hackers also published home addresses, phone numbers and personal e-mail addresses of members of the Democratic House.
The media widely disseminated information on pirated campaign material, magnifying the impact of Russian intrusion on the eve of the 2016 elections. And after a broadcast Republican political advertisement that appeared to use pirated materials, Luján wrote a letter in August warning the Republican congressional committee that it would be complicit in Russia's campaign of influence if it continued to use pirated or stolen material.
US intelligence officials and technology titans like Facebook and Microsoft said they saw clearly that Russia continued to actively interfere in the US political process. But there has been no public evidence suggesting that Russia or any other state actor has penetrated the candidate networks or the two campaign committees.
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