The Hill: Dems use defense bill amendments to protest Trump stance on Russia

Two Democratic Reps. have introduced amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act hammering the President's perceived dovishness on Russia.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Virg) introduced an amendment blocking funding to any new joint cybersecurity effort with Russia, such as the one the President is said to have agreed to with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Officials from both the United States and Russia in the room when President Trump and Putin met Friday both said the leaders agreed to some form of bilateral cybersecurity unit.

Trump tweeted early Sunday morning that "Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.."

Thirteen hours later he appeared to reverse course in another tweet, "The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen."

Rep. Ted Lieu introduced an amendment establishing that it is the "sense of Congress that [Trump]...undermin[es] the conclusions of the intelligence community and his own cabinet members...[and] United States credibility, hinders deterrence and challenges United States standing with key allies." by not acknowledging the overwhelming consensus among U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the attempts to undermine the election during the 2016 campaign.

Trump has argued that only the CIA, NSA, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence have formally attributed the attack to Russia, which is fewer than the 17 agencies Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton once argued had agreed on the issue. However, none of the remaining agencies have ever publicly issued a competing opinion and many of those remaining agencies - like Coast Guard Intelligence and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency focus on topics far afield from the issue.