A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act would have required political campaigns to report it if a foreign country reaches out to them with an offer of assistance. Republicans, however, stripped it from the bill, CNN.com reported.
Had the measure been in place in 2016, it would have required President Donald Trump's campaign to inform the FBI that Russia reached out to them.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said that the Senate Republicans in the Intelligence Committee voted that the provision be removed from the intelligence bill. But it was just weeks ago that the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to approve the amendment as part of the Intelligence Authorization Act.
"That bill, however, was unlikely to get Senate floor time on its own, which is why it's being included in the National Defense Authorization Act," CNN explained. "The effort to strip the foreign election help provision from the intelligence bill was not a surprise, as acting Senate Intelligence Chairman Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, predicted earlier this month it would be removed before the bill was on the floor, because of an objection from the Senate Rules Committee."
Warner attacked the move in a floor speech Tuesday.
"If my Republican colleagues want to strip this legislation out of the NDAA behind closed doors, then I'm going to offer it up as an amendment to force an up-or-down vote and put every member of this body on the record," he said.