Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has been charged with 11 counts of wire fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy by federal prosecutors, who allege in a 34-page indictment released Wednesday morning that the former politician was involved in a long-running, corrupt enterprise involving sales of her self-published children’s book series, Healthy Holly.

After weeks of mounting pressure, Pugh resigned her office in May 2019 following revelations first reported by The Baltimore Sun that she made hundreds of thousands of dollars from sales of her children’s book to the University of Maryland Medical System, where she was a longtime board member. It’s been alleged that $800,000 from book sales to a variety of nonprofits and foundations—including Kaiser Permanente and Associated Black Charities—with business, or potential business, before the city and state was funneled through her Health Holly limited liability company.

Pugh, who initially called the investigation “a witch hunt,” stepped down after the FBI raided her two homes and City Hill office, and the City Council put forth a charter amendment to make it possible to remove a mayor from office.

From November 2011 to March 2019—a time period that includes when Pugh served in the state senate—federal prosecutors allege the 69-year old Baltimore politician, most notably along with legislative aid Gary Brown, Jr., “did knowingly devise” a scheme to defraud purchasers of Health Holly books. The allegations claim that Pugh used the proceeds of sales to promote her political career, fund her mayoral election campaign, and enrich herself—including buying and renovating her house, and paying down $40,000 in credit card and home equity loan debts.

Pugh is scheduled to appear for arraignment in U.S. District Court in Baltimore before U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow on Nov. 21. She is also expected to turn herself in to the U.S. Marshals prior to the afternoon hearing in federal court.

“Our elected officials must place the interests of the citizens above their own,” United States Attorney Robert K. Hur said in a statement announcing the indictment. “Corrupt public employees rip off the taxpayers and undermine everyone’s faith in government. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will zealously pursue those who abuse the taxpayers’ trust and bring them to justice.”

Guilty pleas from related investigations of Brown, Jr., and Roslyn Wedington, the executive director of a nonprofit training center where Pugh served as board chair, were also unsealed Wednesday. Brown has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, falsifying a tax return, and two counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Wedington has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the federal government and multiple counts of falsifying tax returns.

Central to the federal investigation, the indictment highlights, is that Pugh’s self-published Healthy Holly books—generally considered amateurish—were sold to nonprofits, foundations, and others with business before the city and state. Also central to the federal investigation are allegations that Pugh “double sold” books and did not provide actual books to entities that had paid for them.

Among other tax evasion charges, federal prosecutors allege Pugh reported her taxable income in 2016 to the IRS as $31,020 when it was, in fact, more than 10 times that figure. Among the related allegations is that Pugh wrote checks to Brown “to create false business expenses for purported outside services performed for Healthy Holly.” She is also charged with tax evasion in 2015.

If convicted, Pugh faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for the wire fraud conspiracy and for each of the seven counts of wire fraud; five years in federal prison for conspiracy to defraud the United States; and five years in federal prison for each of the two counts of tax evasion. It is worth noting that actual sentences for federal crimes are typically significantly less than the maximum penalties allowed.

Here’s further background: After Pugh’s mayoral election, Brown was found guilty of violating election laws for using his relatives to channel illegal funds to her campaign. Nonetheless, despite questions, Pugh did not fire Brown from his City Hall position after his conviction.

Pugh launched Healthy Holly, LLC, in 2011 to publish, market, and sell children’s books she authored. Since 1997, she also owned Catherine E. Pugh and Company, Inc., a marketing and public relations consulting firm. The principal address for both companies was Pugh’s residence in Baltimore, according to the federal indictment, which adds that Pugh was also the sole signatory on the Healthy Holly and Pugh Company bank accounts. Pugh did not maintain a personal bank account, according to the indictment, commingling her business bank accounts for personal and business use.

Pugh, of course, became the second recent Baltimore mayor to resign following a criminal investigation. Former Mayor Sheila Dixon, who assumed office in 2007 after former Mayor Martin O’Malley was elected governor, resigned in 2010 after she was found guilty of charges she had misappropriated gift cards intended for low-income families.

Current Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, the City Council president when Pugh stepped down, has assumed the mayoral duties in the interim. He also recently announced he will run for a full term in 2020.

Pugh has not appeared publicly to address questions about the scandal since her resignation, which was read in a short statement by her private lawyer Steve Silverman at a press conference at his downtown office

“In the best interest of the people and the government of the Mayor and City of Baltimore, I am writing to attest that, effective immediately, I hereby resign from the Office of Mayor, to which I was duly elected on November 8, 2016,” read Pugh’s resignation letter. “I am confident that I have left the City in capable hands for the duration of the term to which I was elected.”

We’ve learned quite a lot in recent weeks about former Mayor Catherine Pugh, who resigned Thursday afternoon amid a rolling scandal around her Healthy Holly children’s book deals and allegations of self-dealing and corruption. (Certainly more will come to light, too, in the wake of those FBI and IRS raids.) Less familiar, though not to long-time city political observers, is Baltimore’s new mayor, Bernard C. “Jack” Young.

As City Council president, Young assumed office last week as the next in succession. Here are the basics about Baltimore’s 51st mayor:

He is a product of East Baltimore.
Young is a 64-year-old, married, father of two, grandfather to three, product of East Baltimore. He got his start in city politics in the 1980s serving on the staff of fellow council member Mary Pat Clarke. At the time, the ambitious Young, who did not attend a four-year college, worked in clerical administration in the radiology department at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Young’s nickname came from his speed as a kid.
In a 1996 interview with The Baltimore Sun after being appointed to fill the vacated 2nd District City Council seat of Anthony Ambridge, Young explained he got his nickname because he was as fast as a jackrabbit as a kid. Later, getting older (and slowing down) it was shortened to a more mature “Jack.” He won election in his own right a couple of years later and hasn’t lost since—focusing on old-school people-to-people politics and constituent service.

Will he run for mayor in 2020?
Young has said he’s not interested. But that has not stopped some from suggesting he give it some thought. Note: his campaign committee has $600,000 in the bank, according to most recent statement filed with the Maryland State Board of Elections. Not a bad start should he change his mind.

He is a nuts-and-bolts politician.
Young does not claim the “progressive” mantle like many of his younger, newer City Council colleagues. He’s more of a flexible Democratic centrist. He’s not likely to talk about ideology or a grand vision for the city’s future, but in terms of water bills, DOT funding cuts, recreation centers, clean streets, and crime.

New mayor took action this past month.
Young was not been shy about making decisions while serving as acting mayor (when with the former mayor on sick leave for five weeks). He put several key Pugh aides on leave, got two top staffers to step aside, and fired three more while she was still out with pneumonia prior to her resignation. As City Council president, Young displayed a keen sense of how to utilize power. Now that he has almost full control of the levers at City Hall, it will be revealing to see his first policy moves.

FBI and criminal-division IRS agents raided the Ashburton residence of Mayor Catherine Pugh, another home owned by Pugh, City Hall, her attorney’s office, and a nonprofit once led by Pugh Thursday morning.

The Washington D.C. agents were executing federal search warrants authorized by the U.S. District Court of Maryland in Baltimore, said Baltimore-based FBI public affairs specialist Dave Fitz. The Maryland Office of the State Prosecutor is currently investigating Pugh for sales paid for by the University of Maryland Medical System, where she sat on the board, of her self-published Healthy Holly children’s books.

FBI agents were also on site at the Maryland Center for Adult Training in Liberty Square. The job training program, once led by Pugh, listed former Pugh staffers fired this week by acting Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young”—Gary Brown Jr., Poetri Deal, and Afra Vance-White as board members—according to reporting by The Baltimore Sun. (The online page listing its board of directors was not available this morning, the center was closed Monday for spring break.) Brown had been found guilty of making illegal campaign contributions to Pugh during her bid for mayor in 2016, but nonetheless remained on her staff.

Top Pugh advisor, former judge, and Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith, who was cited for an illegal campaign loan before being given a position in her administration, resigned earlier this month.

Arriving at City Hall Thursday morning—where an estimated 20 FBI agents were at work—Pugh spokesman James Bentley II told Baltimore magazine that he’d just learned of the raids and had no previous knowledge the mayor was under investigation by the FBI. City Solicitor Andre Davis told reporters Thursday morning that he learned of FBI/IRS investigation of Pugh from news reports.

The 69-year-old Pugh, who remains on leave from office following a bout of pneumonia, “is still recovering” from her illness, Bentley said. He added that there was no change to announce regarding Pugh’s stated plans to return to office. Pugh said at the start of the month that she was taking an indefinite sick leave on the same day Gov. Larry Hogan called for the investigation into sales of her Healthy Holly books to customers with business with the state and city, including UMMS, Kaiser Permantente, and local developer.

The book deals, first reported by The Sun, earned about $800,000 for the limited liability company Pugh established around her widely derided Healthy Holly series. In the wake of corruption allegations, the entire 14-member City Council—save Young, the City Council president—Baltimore City’s contingent of state delegates in General Assembly, Peter Franchot, the state’s comptroller, and Greater Baltimore Committee have asked for Pugh’s resignation.

Since the revelations of Pugh’s book deals, there has been discussion among the city’s leaders about amending the Baltimore’s charter and the state constitution to enable the removal of a sitting mayor. As it stands, only a criminal conviction can trigger a Baltimore mayor’s removal from office.

Young, formally Baltimore’s Ex Officio Mayor while Pugh is on paid leave, has said he is not interested in running for mayor. His spokesman, Lester Davis, reiterated to Baltimore magazine Thursday Young “is focused on running the city.”

City Councilman Brandon Scott, considered a potential 2020 mayoral candidate, called for Pugh to resign immediately. He described the raids as an “embarrassment” and said the City needs move forward. “Baltimore is a great and resilient city, but we can’t afford to waste anymore time on this issue,” Scott said. “There are many important issues in front of us that require the complete attention of a full-time Mayor.”

In a tweet, Gov. Hogan restated his call for Pugh to step down. “Mayor Pugh has lost the public trust,” Hogan said. “She is clearly not fit to lead. For the good of the city, Mayor Pugh must resign.”

The raid of Pugh’s home, of course, is a reminder of a similar raid in 2008 of then Mayor Sheila Dixon’s home. In 2009, Dixon pled guilty to using more than $500 in retail store gift cards intended for needy families

In Town of the Big House, a new five-part podcast series hosted by WYPR, local documentary producer Richard Yeagley embeds with an unknown Virginia real estate developer named Kahan Dhillon, who seemingly arrived out of nowhere in Baltimore in 2016, proposing a massive $10 billion citywide development plan.

Dhillon’s pitch to the city, which he dubbed “The Baltimore Renaissance,” earned him interviews and headlines from much of the local media—including WBAL, The Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore Business Journal, as well as WYPR. He claimed personal and private investment commitments of $200 million for the effort and garnered meetings with numerous community leaders and local officials, including City Council President Jack Young, former Mayor Sheila Dixon, and William Cole, president and CEO of the Baltimore Development Corp. (Young even sent out an email introducing Dhillon to his fellow council members.)

City Councilman John Bullock eventually invited Dhillon—founder of a small Alexandria, Virginia, real estate company—to air his plan at a council hearing in July 2017, which is where everything kind of fell apart.

It all sounded too vague, not to mention too good to be true, to a couple of council members—especially when Dhillon said he was seeking $3.5 million in planning fees to launch his project. In particular, Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer and Eric Costello questioned the seriousness and real-world clout behind Dhillon’s thin initiative. “The Baltimore Renaissance” plan basically died on the spot, although Dhillon has remained on the periphery of city politics and community activism.

In Town of the Big House, Yeagley, who spent 18 months tracking Dhillon as he promoted his project, raises the specter that the would-be developer was, at least initially, part of a Baltimore-based political corruption investigation by the FBI. “That’s my working theory,” he told Baltimore magazine. Specifically, Yeagley tries to connect the timeline of Dhillon’s early efforts with the timeline of the FBI investigation into former state Sen. Nathaniel Oaks. In January of 2017, six months before Dhillon’s formal pitch to the City Council, Oaks confessed to the FBI that he had accepted payments from an informant posing as an out-of-town developer. Ultimately, Yeagley posits—albeit without definitive evidence—Dhillon just ran with the project after the FBI was forced to end their investigation.

According to the FBI, “as a result of Oaks’ deliberate and intentional conduct in tipping off” another political target of their investigation, their covert investigation into that politician, and “possibly other politicians” was no longer viable.

The podcast doesn’t provide any answers to the basic questions it raises and certainly does not claim any criminal wrongdoing by Dhillon. But it is a compelling recount of a strange saga, and a revealing look behind-the-scenes at Baltimore politics and the outsized role developers play in shaping the city.

It is also a tale of a city desperate for big change and susceptible to big promises.

Responding by email, Dhillon defended his integrity and said of series: “The podcast simply put is full of false commentary, innuendos and alternative facts.” He also sent a link to an audio clip put together by a supporter than does not address the fundamental issues raised in Town of the Big House, but disparages Yeagley’s purpose and character.

We suggest you check the podcast, it’s a fun and compelling listen, do some further research if you wish, and decide for yourself what it all means.

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children . . .” —Rev. Daniel Berrigan    

When George Mische heard two clergymen were among the four anti-Vietnam War activists who had poured blood on the draft records at the Baltimore Customs House, he immediately knew who was involved. “It was 1 a.m. and I was in bed with my wife—we were newlyweds living with my brother and his family in New York—and the TV was on low in the background,” Mische recalls with a chuckle. “We were making love, and a breaking news report came on describing what happened, and I said to her, ‘That’s got to be Phil.’”

Phil was the Rev. Philip Berrigan, then a 44-year-old local priest at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church. A decorated Battle of the Bulge veteran before entering the seminary, Berrigan had been one of the first Catholic priests to volunteer to join the Freedom Rides in Mississippi and had spoken out against  the Vietnam War since its outset.

Mische—a younger army veteran and peace organizer who had previously worked in Central America during the Kennedy Administration before resigning over later disagreements with U.S. foreign policy—drove to Baltimore the next morning. Mische had become acquainted with Berrigan through his older brother, a prominent lay Catholic social justice leader.

The efforts of Berrigan, artist Tom Lewis, the Rev. James Mengel, and poet David Eberhardt in October 1967—when they were dubbed the Baltimore Four—garnered brief headlines but failed to generate the spark they felt the anti-war movement needed.

An exchange between a federal prosecutor and their defense attorney would help change that.

 Mische was in the courtroom every day for the trial of the Baltimore Four. And even now, at 80, he still vividly recalls the moment when federal prosecutors wheeled the bloody draft cards out to show the jury just how badly they had been damaged. The activists’ defense attorney, trying to mitigate the claims of permanent harm, suggested the draft board could simply use its duplicate draft files to select men into the war effort. No harm, no foul, in other words.

“The prosecutor then revealed there were no duplicate files,” Mische says, still incredulous a half-century later. “The Selective Service doesn’t have back-up records?” Mische recalls the activists’ defense attorney asking in open court. “You mean, if those records had been burned—that’s it?”

Weeks later, Mische, Berrigan and Lewis, both awaiting sentencing for their Baltimore Four action, plus Father Dan Berrigan, Philip’s brother, a Jesuit and noted writer, and five fellow Catholic activists set fire—with homemade napalm no less—to the draft records of nearly 400 potential inductees in Catonsville.

Actor and activist Martin Sheen called the daytime protest behind the Knights of Columbus building on Frederick Road—caught on film by reporters on May 17, 1968—“arguably the single most powerful antiwar act in American history.”

Media savvy in the old-school age of print and television journalism, the Catonsville Nine, as they were soon nicknamed, had tipped off local newspapers and WBAL-TV about the location of an antiwar demonstration without giving away the exact nature of their plans. Quickly, the photos of two charismatic priests in black religious garments, along with other former Catholic clergy and laity, burning a pile of draft records in the quiet, patriotic small town—and then praying and waiting to be arrested—created a national uproar.

In the ensuing four years, more than 40 draft resistance acts inspired by the Catonsville Nine followed—from Washington, New York, Boston, and Chicago to Milwaukee, Camden, Buffalo, and Rochester—reinvigorating the anti-Vietnam War movement.

“We felt like the Vietnam War was this big monster, and somehow we wanted to get our hands around its neck and bring it down,” Mische, one of two surviving members of the Catonsville Nine, says today.

Four of the Nine went underground instead of showing up for prison.

The letters to Congress, the sit-ins and marches, the full-page newspaper ads, the protests in front of the White House and homes of cabinet officials, even the self-immolation of Baltimore Quaker Norman Morrison at The Pentagon—none of it was slowing down the U.S. military campaign in Vietnam in early 1968. Nearly 300,000 young men would be inducted that year, the deadliest of the Vietnam War in terms of American casualties.

The initial plans for the Catonsville raid were made the night of March 31, 1968, shortly after President Lyndon Johnson stunned the country by announcing he would not seek reelection. By then, Mische and his wife, Helene, had moved to Washington, D.C. and were, by coincidence, hosting a cook out that Sunday for friends that included seven of the Catonsville Nine—Lewis and Philip Berrigan, as well as Thomas Melville, a former Maryknoll priest, his wife, Margarita Melville, a former nun, John Hogan, a former Maryknoll brother, and Mary Moylan, a nurse. The Melvilles and Hogan had spent years working with impoverished communities in Guatemala before their religious order kicked them out for supporting leftist guerillas fighting against the U.S.-backed government there. Moylan, who was from Baltimore, had served as a volunteer midwife in Uganda. The Melvilles, Hogan, and Moylan were all living in the Misches’ Dupont Circle rowhouse.

“We were all watching the TV when Johnson said he wasn’t running for reelection, but we knew whether it was Hubert Humphrey [the eventual Democratic nominee] or a Republican president—they were going to continue the war,” says Margarita Melville. “Our concern was how do we stop this slaughter in Vietnam. So we agreed to take action again that night and broaden the scope.”

Daniel Berrigan and David Darst, a Christian Brother and high school teacher from St. Louis, would join the action later.

The location of Catonsville was chosen in large part because the massive parking lot at the Knights of Columbus building would make it safe for burning files. But symbolically, the cozy suburban enclave known for its Fourth of July parade, held since 1947, also proved the perfect setting: The point was to wake up middle-class America, the Catholic Church, and other faith communities—with essentially a religious protest.

Only a handful of the 260 U.S. Catholic bishops stood against the war, and the radical statement the Catonsville Nine delivered to reporters, in turn, delivered a harsh criticism of the faith community. Their message read, in part: “We confront the Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country’s crimes.”

That they did not look like protestors made their message all the more resonant.

“That these were clean-cut, mostly 30 and 40 year olds with day jobs helped legitimatize their effort and the anti-war movement,” says Baltimore filmmaker Joe Tropea, who co-directed the 2013 award-winning documentary Hit and Stay about the Catonsville Nine. “The combination of civil disruption with an element of art and theater—and people willing to risk prison for living their values and conscience—that was hugely inspirational to a lot of people.”

But more than even the action itself, it was the five-day trial in a packed Baltimore federal court that cemented the Catonsville action’s legacy as a turning point in the anti-war movement. The trial was preceded by a protest march—1,500 people by some accounts, twice that according to others—from Wyman Park Dell to downtown, which was followed by daily courthouse demonstrations. Counterculture icon William Kunstler took the lead defense attorney role. Radical intellectuals and authors Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn came to Baltimore for the trial.

All of the Nine admitted to burning the draft files, but not to their guilt. Given relatively wide latitude to defend themselves, they testified they acted out of conscience and justified their actions as a response to not only the terrible civilian bloodshed in Vietnam but to U.S. military support for dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere. They also invoked the presence of poverty and racism at home, which they connected to the cost of an immoral war. The jury, however, took just two hours to return guilty verdicts. But then four of the nine (both Berrigans, Mische, and Mary Moylan) went “underground” instead of showing up for prison. Dan Berrigan, in particular—who made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list—tormented FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover by resurfacing and giving sermons, which were reported in the media, and then ducking back below the FBI’s radar. The Berrigans made the cover of Time in 1971, keeping the story alive for years. Ultimately, all involved spent significant time in prison. Philip Berrigan and Lewis received six years because of their earlier involvement in the Baltimore Four—and did about three and a half years with time off for good behavior. Mische served 25 months. Tom and Margarita Melville served 18 months and nine months, respectively.

In the meantime, similar acts were carried out across the U.S. In an indication of the anti-draft movement’s growing acceptance, the Camden (NJ) 28 were acquitted at their trial in the spring of 1973—roughly the same time Defense Secretary Melvin Laird announced an end to the draft. By then, more than 58,000 U.S. servicemen had lost their lives. Estimates of Vietnamese military and civilian deaths range from 1.5 million to 3.8 million, not including hundreds of thousands more casualties in Cambodia and Laos.

In many ways, the idea of clergy, and others of deep faith and moral convictions, committing nonviolent felonies in the name of peace and social justice, eluding capture, and going to jail seems anachronistic. But in Baltimore, the Catonsville Nine begat a living legacy.

Philip Berrigan later married former nun Liz McAlister and founded the Jonah House, where they launched the anti-nuclear weapon Plowshares movement. (“Plowshares” refers to the words of the prophet Isaiah, who said that swords shall be beaten into plowshares.)

The most lasting touchstone is the Viva House, a Catholic Worker house in West Baltimore, which was established in August 1968. The first people to stay  there were members of the Nine and their families during the trial. It was founded by Brendan Walsh, a former seminarian, and his wife, Willa Bickham, a former nun, who played behind-the-scene roles supporting the Nine. Since 1968, the Viva House has been a soup kitchen and food pantry.

“The war has kept coming back over the years,” says Walsh. “We served veterans back from Vietnam when we first opened a soup kitchen in Hollins Market, and we see veterans today, from other wars, suffering from PTSD symptoms.

“I was young then, during the war, a conscientious objector. We thought, well, people will see what the war has done to the Vietnamese, to our soldiers, and how it has torn this country apart. They will come to their senses, and we won’t do this again. But the war wasn’t an aberration, it became perpetual,” Walsh continues. “Latin America, Afghanistan, and Iraq—although it’s less visible because we do it with drones. The drug war came, too—a violent solution to a medical problem.

“We’ve watched almost a third of  this city since leave since then—40,000 in our zip code in West Baltimore. Meanwhile things continue to get worse for the poor. That’s the craziest thing. The works of war just destroy everything.”

Today former FBI director James Comey told the the Senate Intelligence Committee that he believes he was fired by President Donald Trump because of concerns with the Russia investigation. Due to this mistrust, Comey testified, he documented their private conversations, appointed a special counsel to probe the administration, and accused White House officials of telling “lies, plan and simple.”

In numerous, seemingly uncomfortable, conversations with President Trump, Comey said he was asked for his “loyalty” and to abandon the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 

Several Maryland representatives had varying reactions to the bombshell testimony, including U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, who called the details “disturbing.” 

“There is no reason to doubt the integrity of Mr. Comey’s recollection of how Mr. Trump repeatedly used the weight of the presidency to ask a law enforcement official to drop an investigation,” Cardin said in a statement. “Such inappropriate actions cannot be simply written off to a learning curve.”

Cardin said it should further encourage his colleagues to cosponsor his legislation to create an independent, 9/11-style commission to investigate Russia’s actions during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Other local representatives had a different takeaway from Comey’s testimony today.

“I am disturbed by Mr. Comey’s statement that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to refer to the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email servers as a ‘matter’ instead of an ‘investigation,'” Rep. Andy Harris said in a statement. “If true, this would in fact demonstrate a clear bias by Ms. Lynch and an attempt to influence public perception of Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.”

The testimony was also of special interest to Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, which is running an investigation into possible Russian collusion. Today, he announced that Rep. Trey Gowdy, of South Carolina, was chosen by the Republican Steering Committee as the new Committee Chairman, subject to final approval.

“I offer my sincerest congratulations to Rep. Gowdy on his new role as Chairman of the Oversight Committee,” Cummings said in a statement. “I look forward to working with him in a constructive and bipartisan manner on an agenda that serves the interests of the American people.”

 Cardin concluded his statement with another note of bipartisanship, urging both sides of the aisle to investigate Russia’s interference with the American political system.

“It is time for Republican leadership in Congress to acknowledge publicly how dangerous the president’s actions and rhetoric have been to American rule of law—the very foundation of our nation,” he said. “We need an independent commission to get to the heart of Russia’s interference in our country and to make public its findings and recommendations for how we can avoid this kind of nightmare in the future.”

Shortly after the Comey hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen went down to the Senate floor to urge Congress to pass sanctions on Russia. 

“Right now the world is looking at the United States and asking why we haven’t imposed tougher sanctions on Russia for its unprecedented and multifaceted campaign to undermine our elections,” he said. “There is no excuse for inaction. The United States must show Putin that we will not stand idly by while he attacks our democracy. We need to be unified in our resolve and put patriotism over partisanship.”