Dear Editor,

We are witnessing a reenactment of “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Just substitute “Republicans and White House” for “Nero” and “American Democracy” for “Rome.”

Our 2016 elections were hacked by the Russians. Shortly after the inauguration, Congress opened several investigations into Russia’s cyber-attack on our democracy in order to prevent this from happening again.

Midterm elections will be held in less than a year, and it is not evident that any of these committees (especially the House Intelligence Committee) are working towards or developing strategies to protect our elections from another attack.

Instead, you hear rumblings from the Republicans that these investigations have gone on long enough and should come to an end soon. The House Intel Committee seems to feel it is more important to reopen the investigation of Uranium One and HRC (Hillary).

Uranium One happened over seven years ago (2010). It appears these Republicans are willing to continue to investigate an event that happened over seven years ago, but they are not interested to continue investigations that are less than a year old.

The real danger here is that they have failed to develop a plan to keep our elections and democracy safe. They have spent most of their time going on wild tangents (Uranium One, unmasking, etc.). In addition to these distractions, they have attempted to discredit the FBI (an American democratic institution) and Bob Mueller, who is heading up the DOJ investigation into Russian interference in our elections.

Another highly unusual activity taking place in the House Intel Committee is the formation of a “secret” group led by Rep. Devin Nunes to also discredit the Mueller investigation. The Republicans that are participating in these behaviors are harming our democracy and weakening our norms and rule of law.

Rene Payne

Stanford