Russia ran U.S. election interference, no Trump collusion -panel Republicans

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Russia ran 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, Republicans on a congressional panel said in a report released yesterday.

The findings of majority Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee were immediately challenged by minority Democrats following a year of rancorous disputes on a panel whose role is to oversee intelligence agencies in a spirit of bipartisanship. Republicans, over Democratic objections, voted in March to end the committee’s investigation of election meddling.

The 253-page report was seized on by Trump, a Republican, who posted its conclusions on Twitter and repeated his view that the Russian investigation is “A total Witch Hunt! MUST END NOW!” despite probes by a U.S. special counsel and other congressional committees that are still open.

Trump has repeatedly denied receiving help from Moscow for his election campaign. The Kremlin denies meddling in the election.

The heavily redacted Republican report contains little new information about Russia’s election interference or the Trump teams contacts with Russia.

But it criticizes an array of actors for their response to the election meddling.

Then U.S. President Barack Obama’s response to Russia’s actions was insufficient, it said, while the FBI’s notification to hacking victims was “inadequate.”

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 interaction with WikiLeaks was “highly objectionable and inconsistent with U.S. national security interests,” it said.

Separately, a Russian lawyer who attended the Trump Tower meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, said in an interview with NBC News that she had Russian government ties.

“I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she said.