Hillary Clinton has called Downing Street’s suppression of a report into potential Russian infiltration of British politics “damaging, inexplicable and shaming”.
The 2016 US presidential candidate told the Guardian it was “incredibly surprising and unacceptable that in your country there is a government report sitting there about Russian influence and your current government isn’t releasing it”.
The potentially incendiary report by the intelligence and security committee has already been approved by the intelligence agencies. Downing Street was sent a final draft on 17 October and had been expected to sign off the report by the end of last month.
However, No 10 indicated that the parliamentary report would not be made public before the election, citing a sign-off process that it said could take six weeks. The chairman of the committee, Dominic Grieve, called the decision to delay publication “jaw-dropping”.
Clinton said: “I mean, who do they think they are that they would keep information like that from the public, especially before an election?
“Well, I’ll tell you who they think they are. They think that they are the all-powerful, strong men who should be ruling,” she said, linking the suppression of the report to a rising authoritarian turn in western leaders. » | Charlotte Higgins | Monday, November 11, 2019
