House intel Committee finds Russian warfare on elections, but no collusion with Moscow
The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee officially ends their investigation into Russian collusion, confirming that Russia did run an information warfare campaign to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but there is no evidence that President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow.
The new 253-page report released on Friday is already being challenged by Democrats
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The report said that the Trump campaign should not have held a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Russians who claimed to have damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, nor praised and communicated with WikiLeaks, which released documents hacked by Russia.
“The investigation did find poor judgment and ill-considered actions by the Trump and Clinton campaigns,” it said. “For example, the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between members of the Trump campaign and a Russian lawyer who falsely purported to have damaging information on the Clinton campaign demonstrated poor judgment.”
The interaction with WikiLeaks was “highly objectionable and inconsistent with U.S. national security interests,” it said.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released their own 98-page report, which charged that the Republican document “reflects a lack of seriousness and interest in pursuing the truth.”
“Throughout the investigation, Committee Republicans chose not to seriously investigate – or even see, when in plain sight – evidence of collusion,” the panel’s top Democrat, Representative Adam Schiff, said in a statement on Friday.
Schiff said the Democrats would continue their own investigation and this week “received new documents from another important witness.”
Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the leader of the conservative Freedom Caucus, agreed, saying the report showed that it’s “time for the special counsel investigation to end.”
Representative Michael Conaway of Texas, who led the panel’s Russia investigation, said the report shouldn’t be used to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian probe.
“Mueller’s got a broader area of jurisdiction, he’s looking at a lot of other things,” Conaway said. “I think Mr. Mueller should finish his investigation on time and on his own schedule.”
