Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he will ask President Trump this weekend to lift sanctions against top Russian officials so they can visit the United States later this year.

Paul said members of both bodies of Russia’s legislature had agreed to come to the United States to continue talks after the GOP senator visited Moscow earlier this month. 

“They have both agreed to come to Washington in the fall for further meetings. That’s a good thing. The downside is the chairman of each of the committees is banned from coming to the United States because of sanctions,” Paul told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. 

Sen. @RandPaul on U.S.-Russia relations: "I think from both sides that our relations are at the worst [that] they've been since the height of the Cold War." @IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/DKrutPzdB5

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 17, 2018

He added that to overcome the blockade he will ask the president, when they talk this weekend, to “take people off the list who are in the legislature.” 

Paul didn’t specify who specifically he would ask be removed from U.S. sanctions lists. 

But Paul met with Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, during his trip to Moscow. Kosachev was targeted during a new wave of sanctions announced earlier this year. 

Paul’s trip to Moscow raised eyebrows in Washington, where many of his colleagues have been skeptical of Trump’s warmer stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Spokesmen for both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told The Hill last week that they had not invited, and we’re not discussing inviting, their Russian counterparts to visit the Capitol. 

…….