The indictments of 12 Russians is "appropriate," but action could have happened more quickly if the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had been more forthcoming, Rep. Lee Zeldin said Friday.
"The DCCC, they could have been a lot more cooperative throughout this process," the New York Republican told Fox News' "Outnumbered Overtime" host Harris Faulkner. "They were not very forthcoming in providing their information. We could've had a lot more answers and conclusions a lot earlier in this process."
On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that 12 Russian intelligence officers were indicted on charges they had hacked into Democratic email accounts during the 2016 election, and then released stolen information before Americans headed to the polls that November.
"This is the appropriate supervised state of investigation with regards to the 2016 election," said Zeldin. "Russia meddles, they do it in Syria, they meddled with their own elections in the past, they will do it again if we don't have transparency and accountability."
Rosenstein said during his announcement that there was no indication that American citizens were involved or that the Russian conspiracy affected the election, and Zeldin said that is consistent with what he's been told as well.
"I am not aware of any crime whatsoever committed by our president or anyone on his behalf," said Zeldin, pointing out that no matter which way Americans lean politically, they should be concerned about cybersecurity.
"It's not just Russia," he said. "China, North Korea, and Iran, cybersecurity is a big issue. This is great work on the part of our Justice Department for there to be accountability."
Further, Zeldin insisted that President Donald Trump did not commit a crime to win his election, even though there are people who hope special counsel Robert Mueller will trace it to the White House.
He also pointed out that even if an adversary is able to enter the systems of a state or local board of elections, that does not mean votes would necessarily be changed.
"They will test out systems, but it doesn't mean they actually attacked it to change results...it doesn't mean they changed any vote counts, and that's very consistent with the briefings that are received."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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