South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds in a Thursday appearance on CNN had trouble defending his vote to lift sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who has been implicated in efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
Asked pointedly by host Jim Sciutto why he had cast that vote, Rounds began stumbling right out of the gate.
"The original, uh, the original limitations that were put on the businesses that he is actively involved with was designed to change his behavior," Rounds sputtered. He added that both the Senate Intelligence and Banking committees had signed off on it. "We don't like it, we wish we had another alternative, but if we don't lift it, we're not following our own law."
"To be fair, those limitations are not as severe as the secretary described them," shot back Sciutto, citing reporting from the New York Times that showing that Deripaska and his allies would keep a majority stake in the sanctioned businesses. "How is that a fair punishment for an ally of the Russian president who helped Russia interfere in the U.S. Presidential election?"
Rounds then pivoted and said that the vote had been based on inaccurate information, and promised "to take another look at it."
Watch the video below.
