House panel: No collusion evidence
Democrats slam Republican report on Trump, Russia
WASHINGTON— After a yearlong investigation marred by bitter partisan divisions, Republicans announced Monday that the House intelligence committee has found no evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russians who used social media and hacked emails in an effort to influence the 2016 election.
A draft 150-page report will be shared Tuesday with Democrats, who have pressed for a moreaggressive investigation than Republicans would allow, and who complained Monday that the panel’s work was incomplete.
The Republican report concludes that the Russian government’s extensive meddling in the campaign was not intended to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton. That puts the House Republicans at direct odds with the nation’s intelligence agencies, who assessed last year that the Kremlin specifically sought to undermine Clinton and assist Trump.
Guided in part by the committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who had recused himself from the investigation, the panel’s probe largely broke down in crude partisan infighting, marking a rare breach of decorum and tradition on a President Donald Trump, seen with Russian President Vladimir Putin, repeatedly has denied there was collusion between his presidential campaign and Russians. panel that conducts oversight of the nation’s intelligence community to prevent government abuses.
“This is the first time you really see one party using the gavel going after the intelligence community itself for partisan purposes,” Mieke Eoyang, a former committee staff member now at Third Way, a Washington think tank. “That is going to set back intelligence oversight for decades.”
Late Monday, Trump touted the Republicans’ conclusion in an all-caps posting on Twitter, to which Rep. Adam Schiff, D- Calif., replied: “This was not the finding of the House Intelli- gence Committee, Mr. President, but only a statement by its GOP members, who lack the courage to stand up to a President of their own party when the national interest necessitates it.”
The Republican conclusion gives Trump valuable political cover since it is the first congressional committee to support his repeated denials of any collusion with Russia. Like the president, the GOP-led panel also blamed former President Barack Obama for what it calls a “lackluster” response to the Russian hacking and interference during the campaign.
The White House still faces the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, and that shows no sign of ending anytime soon. Mueller’s team already has filed criminal charges against 19 people, including four former Trump campaign aides, and several are cooperating with federal prosecutors.
Two other congressional inquiries into Russian meddling also are underway.
The Senate intelligence committee, which has generally acted with bipartisanship, was scheduled to hear closed-door testimony this week from Felix Sater, a convicted felon and former FBI informant who was a Trump business associate. Sater worked with Trump’s company on several real estate projects, including a Manhattan hotel and condominium project known as Trump Soho and a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has faced its own partisan hurdles with squabbles between Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat, and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman. Feinstein has issued her own requests for information from Trump associates and even released an interview transcript without committee approval.
Republicans on the House intelligence committee argued that their report will allow authorities to boost defenses against future outside meddling in U.S. elections, including the midterms this November.
“We will now be moving into the next phase of this investigation,” said Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, who has led the inquiry. “It’s important that we give the American people the information they need to arm themselves against Russian attempts to influence our elections.”
Democrats described the Republican conclusions as a smokescreen intended to protect the president.
“The majority has placed the interests of protecting the president over protecting the country, and history will judge its actions harshly,” said Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee. Schiff said the committee should investigate allegations of Russian money laundering.
Democrats will likely release their own report on the investigation, a reflection of the rancor that has defined the House investigation for months.
The committee spent more than a month consumed by controversial allegations, advanced by Republicans and rebutted by Democrats, that federal law enforcement had improperly eavesdropped on a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, shortly before the election.
The resulting four-page GOP memo argued that law enforcement inappropriately included opposition research funded by Democrats in an application for a surveillance warrant. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which conducts its business in secret, approved the warrant and renewed it three times.
Trump’s allies used the memo to argue that the Russia probes, including the Mueller investigation, have been tainted by partisanship from the start. The president claimed the GOP memo “totally vindicates” him and hailed Nunes as “a man of tremendous courage and grit.”
Democrats later released their own 10-page memo rebutting the Republicanallegations, saying the FBI and Justice Department handled the warrant appropriately.