Senators: Russia did interfere with elections
Panel leaders want to end probe before 2018 primaries.
The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday largely endorsed the findings of the intelligence community that Russia sought to sway the 2016 U.S. elections through a hacking and influence campaign, and they called for a “more aggressive, whole-of-government approach” to ensure future elections are not similarly compromised.
“There is consensus among members and staff that we trust the conclusions of the ICA,” Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the committee’s chairman, said at Wednesday news conference, referring to the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia was behind hackings of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign director John Podesta’s email account and had attempted to exploit public opinion by sowing false information, much of it through fake social media accounts.
“But we don’t close our consideration of it,” he added.
Burr also said that “the issue of collusion is still open” and would not be resolved until the committee’s work was done. He said that a deadline for the committee was the looming start of the 2018 primary season.
“We’ve got to make our facts, as it related to Russia’s involvement in our election, before the primaries getting started in 2018,” Burr said.
“You can’t walk away from this and believe that Russia’s not currently active.”
Burr and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s vice chairman, said the committee has interviewed more than 100 people and reviewed more than 100,000 documents, many of them from the intelligence community, President Donald Trump’s inner circle and former members of the Obama administration.
The committee has lately been focusing on the role social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter played in the dissemination of false or misleading ads and stories planted or otherwise backed by Russian operatives.
Warner said that the tech giants were beginning to take the issue of Russian meddling more seriously and the committee was “seeing increasing levels of cooperation.”
“I was concerned at first that some of these social media companies did not take this threat seriously,” he said. “I believe they are recognizing that threat now.”