After the Senate Intelligence Committee’s nearly 1,000-page report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election ended, the committee’s Republicans and Democrats expressed their views on the evidence that emerged from the years-old investigation.
The report itself is bipartisan, and in many tactics it exceeded the Mueller report for its breadth and clarity, offering new documentation on the contacts between Trump’s crusade and Russian intelligence, but the senators’ reactions in the end were not, among other things.
“Volume Five thoroughly examines the threats and vulnerabilities of counterintelligence in the 2016 election, but never explicitly states the critical fact: the Committee did not discover any evidence that the then-candidate, Donald Trump, or his campaign, had reached an agreement with the Russian government. in their efforts to interfere in the election Read the reaction of six Republican senators: Risch (ID), Rubio (FL), Blunt (MO), Cotton (AR), Cornyn (TX) and Sasse (NE).
(The chairman and vice president of the committee did not sign up for the “additional opinions” segment at the end)..
The Trump administration’s foreign policy movements toward Russia, Republicans said, “were the result of a foreign policy point of view, Russian influence.”
And, echoing what would then be the basis of the political trial rates opposed to the president, The Republican senators accused the Democratic Party, “using a series of unrelated transactions, of hiring a foreign citizen to seek the filth of a political opponent, provided through foreigners.” sources.” They referred to Christopher Steele, whose opposition study record was first published through BuzzFeed News in January 2017.
Volume five of the committee’s report, the Republicans concluded, is a “significant contribution to the old record.”
But, of course, we know how this one ends: “After more than 3 years of research through this committee, we can now say without a doubt that there is no collusion,” the senators wrote.
Democrats’ “additional opinions” on the report were more extensive and were signed through five senators: Heinrich (NM), Feinstein (CA), Wyden (OR), Harris (CA) and Bennet (CO), who said, on the contrary, that the report’s findings were “what the collusion looks like.”
Specifically, they wrote, Trump’s crusade officials, adding former Crusade President Paul Manafort himself, have “cooperated” with Russia’s efforts toward Trump.
Manafort will provide data on the internal crusade to Konstantin Kilimnik, which the report describes as a Russian intelligence officer who “may have been related to GRU’s leaking and hacking operation,” evidence that Manafort “connected directly to Russian interference,” the senators said. Said.
“These are cursed facts that need to be ignored,” they said.
The senators also pointed to the report’s conclusion that it is “unlikely” that George Papadopoulos, who probably learned of Russia’s meddling efforts in April 2016, did not tell others on the Trump campaign.
And yet “no authority has been notified,” they wrote, and Trump’s crusade has developed a strategy around publishing hacked Democratic emails even after the U.S. government has decided it will be a Russian effort.
Democrats took a page of their reaction to clarify the differences between their investigation and that of the former special suggested Robert Mueller: that the former is counterintelligence while the second is criminal. Nor did they have the strength to factor in the search for court orders and the use of wiretapping, they said.
“The result is that the other Americans still don’t, and possibly never would, have all the mandatory facts to the full degree of cooperation between Russia and Trump’s crusade in 2016,” they wrote.
Later from his “additional vision,” Wyden criticized “unnecessary” writing, adding data on the 2020 election.
“Other Americans do not receive services through competitive wording of a narrative describing the continuity of Russian interference before and after the 2016 election,” he wrote. “The other Americans also deserve more than a double popularity in which data on Russian interference in the US election remain largely worded while data that may cast doubt on investigations into this interference are disseminated en masse.”
Wyden also criticized the committee’s inability to investigate Trump’s monetary interests in counterintelligence.
“In short, the Committee took over the money,” he wrote.