Panel backs up intelligence agencies

Senate committee says Russia aimed to help Trump in election

WASHINGTON – The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday backed up conclusions from U.S. intelligence agencies that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election with the aim of helping President Donald Trump win, releasing an unclassified report that called the intelligence assessment solid.

“The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions,” said a statement from Sen. Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., the panel’s chairman.

The committee’s statement is not a surprise – Burr and the panel’s Democratic vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia – have both made previous statements supporting the intelligence community’s assessment. But the strong endorsement nonetheless marks a significant milestone in the continued debate over Russia’s role in the 2016 campaign.

The report puts the panel at odds with Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, who issued their own report this year, and the president, who has continued to denigrate the intelligence agencies’ assessment. Just last week, he did so once again, on Twitter.

“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump tweeted, then questioned whether law enforcement had adequately investigated the issue. “So many questions, so much corruption!”

The Senate committee’s bipartisan conclusion comes at a potentially awkward time for Trump, who is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 16 in Helsinki, Finland.

The report not only backs up intelligence officials’ assessment that Russia acted deliberately to help Trump, but also that Putin personally ordered the efforts to meddle in the U.S. campaign. Putin last week met with Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, and told him that there had been no interference Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), left, and Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA.) conduct a news conference in 2017 at the Capitol.

“by the Russian state,” Bolton said in a Fox News interview over the weekend.

The Senate committee, however, said the scope of Russian interference has only become clearer in the years since the campaign.

“Further details have come to light that bolster the assessment,” the report said.

The Senate report diverges from an earlier one released in March by House Intelligence Committee Republicans, who said officials were mistaken to conclude that Moscow wanted Trump to win. The House Republicans’ report also emphasized the lack of public evidence that

Trump’s allies conspired with Russians, something that remains under investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The new Senate committee report does not address the issue of collusion. It did say, however, that intelligence agencies were on solid ground by saying Moscow developed a “clear preference” for Trump.

Officials relied on “public Russian leadership commentary, Russian state media reports, public examples of where Russian interests would have aligned with candidates’ policy statements, and a body of intelligence reporting,” the Senate report said.

The White House permitted Annapolis mayor Gavin Buckley to lower U.S. flags on federal buildings to half-staff Tuesday in remembrance of the mass shooting at The Capital last week after Buckley said it denied his initial request.

President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee-sanders, called Buckley on Tuesday morning to inform him of the decision. The president issued a proclamation ordering the flags lowered nationwide until sunset Tuesday.

Buckley had said Monday the White House declined the initial request the mayor submitted through members of Maryland’s congressional delegation. Buckley said he received word of Trump’s decision through Rep. John Sarbanes, D-MD. Sarbanes’ office would not confirm whether it made the request.

A 15-year-old girl who was forcibly separated from her mother after fleeing to the U.S. from El Salvador described to a Washington state investigator how she was crammed into a windowless room with 60 other girls and deprived of proper sleep or food for three days.

The room was divided by wire fencing into three cages, with each one holding 20 separated girls – some as young as 3 years old, according to an affidavit filed late Monday in federal court in Seattle. The girls, who weren’t told when they’d see their parents again, called it the “icebox.”

“The place was freezing because they kept the air conditioner on all the time, and each child was given a mat and an aluminum blanket,” the investigator for Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson wrote.

– Appeal-democrat news services