The Republican congressman representing Charlottesville, Virginia made stunning claims about the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” of white nationalists.
Rep. Tom Garrett, Jr. (R-VA) is former assistant attorney general serving his first term in Congress. In May, Rep. Garrett announced he would not seek reelection.
“Let me give you breaking news here, back to Charlottesville,” he told CNN anchor Ryan Nobles.
“I sat in a closed session briefing — probably two months ago — about Charlottesville, with the director of the FBI amongst others, and asked if Russian intermeddling had do with fomenting the flames of what happened in Charlottesville,” he said.
“I was told, ‘Yes, it did.’ I was asked if this was classified, they said, ‘No, it is not.’ I waited until today,” he explained.
“This is what happens, Russian intermeddling is seeking to pit Americans against under Americans to undermine confidence in western style democracies, it’s done so in Baltic states, it’s done so in western Europe, it will continue to do so,” Garrett continued.
“They’re trying to make the world safer for kleptocrats and oligarchs and dictators like Putin and they use things like this racial divisive fight — which ignores the commonalities we as Americans have with each other, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion — this is the sort of thing they do,” he continued.
“As a member of Homeland Security, seriously that’s what scares me most,” he concluded.
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