The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Tuesday it strongly backs the finding by intelligence agencies that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, ultimately intending to help Donald Trump win.
Announced in an unclassified summary, the Senate committee assessment is a firm repudiation of its counterpart in the House and Trump himself, who has rejected assertions that Moscow sought to bolster his candidacy through election meddling, The Hill noted.
“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,” committee chair Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in a statement.
The Senate panel determined the ICA is a “"sound intelligence production.”
"A body of reporting, to include different intelligence disciplines, open source reporting on Russian leadership policy preferences, and Russian media content, showed that Moscow sought to denigrate” Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the summary states.
The intelligence community assessment, or ICA, relied on public Russian leadership commentary and state media reports as well as "a body of intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump," the committee found.
The committee also declared the ICA was not itself influenced by politics.
House Republicans have contended the Russia probe went south because it depended on an anti-Trump dossier gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by Democrats and Clinton’s campaign.
“All individuals the committee interviewed verified that the dossier did not in any way inform the analysis,” the Senate panel declared.
The committee, in its summary, also said it "heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach any conclusions” and that differences in confidence between the National Security Administration, CIA and FBI on Putin’s desire to help Trump’s election “appropriately represents analytic differences and was reached in a professional and transparent manner.”
The House Intelligence Committee released its report on 2016 election meddling in March, and determined that the intelligence officials who made the assessment in January 2017 didn’t meet the appropriate evidentiary standard to make that judgment, The Hill reported.
The Senate Intelligence panel has continued its investigation of whether anyone on the Trump campaign colluded with Russia’s efforts, and Burr has said he hopes to wrap up interviews this month and begin drafting a final report in August, Bloomberg news reported.
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