[quote]WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Monday it would not immediately impose additional sanctions on Russia under a new law designed to punish Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, insisting the measure was already hitting Russian companies.
“Today, we have informed Congress that this legislation and its implementation are deterring Russian defense sales,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. “Since the enactment of the ... legislation, we estimate that foreign governments have abandoned planned or announced purchases of several billion dollars in Russian defense acquisitions.”
The administration faced a deadline on Monday to impose sanctions on anyone determined to conduct significant business with Russian defense and intelligence sectors, already sanctioned for their alleged role in the election.
But citing long time frames associated with major defense deals, Nauert said it was too soon to tell how effective the law had been, so it was better to wait to impose those sanctions.
“From that perspective, if the law is working, sanctions on specific entities or individuals will not need to be imposed because the legislation is, in fact, serving as a deterrent,” she said in a statement.
President Donald Trump’s administration also did not make public reports required by Monday under the bill he reluctantly signed into law on Aug. 2, just six months into his presidency.
The measure, known as the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” or CAATSA, required the administration to list “oligarchs” close to President Vladimir Putin’s government and issue a report detailing possible consequences of penalizing Russia’s sovereign debt. [/quote]
So this legislation was written by congress, passed by both houses nearly unanimously [419-3 in the House, 98-2 in the Senate], and signed by the President - the President is refusing to enforce it?
If the President isn't going to do his job, he needs to go. Dereliction of Duty is an impeachable offense.
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Edited by AnAverageGamer: 1/30/2018 3:54:59 AMI’m surprised I’m the first comment on this... Either way, this really pisses me off. I try to stay fairly independent toward things, but Russia attacked our electoral process and our two congressional bodies both voted almost unilaterally to punish them for it. Now Trump, a man who is openly trying to undermine an investigation into his potential links [i]to Russia[/i] is refusing to punish the very country he claims to have no ties to [i]despite a bipartisan vote for him to do so![/i] It’s absurd. I get why people who hate liberals love Trump, and I get how pathetic people who love bullies love him, but I don’t get how any rational person who loves America could love somebody who is so blatantly elevating another country above his own. Trump is shitting all over the image of what a republican is to so many independent voters who may lean right and causing irreparable damage to that party’s image. It’s a shame to see republicans all so complacent with that just because they can make some money off the same wealthy donators who Trump campaigned that he’d be against. I can’t wait for politics to be boring again.