After 14 months of investigation on Trump-Russia Collusion, no evidence pointing towards Russian interference in 2016 has been found. The House Intelligence Committee is suspending the investigation and preparing a final report of it’s (lack of) findings.
The first draft of the 150 page report will be handed over to the Democrats on Tuesday for review.
Texas Rep. Mike Conway of Texas said on Monday that, “We found no evidence of collusion, adding, “We found perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, the inappropriate judgment in taking meetings — but only Tom Clancy could take this series of inadvertent contacts, meetings, whatever, and weave that into some sort of a spy thriller that could go out there.”
Further, he said, “we couldn’t establish the same conclusion that the CIA did that [the Russians] specifically wanted to help Trump.”
Trump applauded the committee’s findings on Twitter:
“The house intelligence committee has, after a 14 month long in-depth investigation, found no evidence of collusion or coordination between the trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.”
Representative Adam Schiff (Calif.), called the end of the probe a “tragic milestone” in a blistering statement and a “capitulation to the executive branch.”
“By ending its oversight role in the only authorized investigation in the House, the Majority has placed the interests of protecting the President over protecting the country, and history will judge its actions harshly,” Schiff wrote.
Schiff in his statement rejected the assertions by GOP, saying that the evidence “is clear and overwhelming that the Intelligence Community Assessment was correct.”
“If the Russians do have leverage over the President of the United States, the Majority has simply decided it would rather not know,” he said.
Conaway said Monday that Democrats would make “extensive changes” to the report and that It will include “how anti-Trump research made its way from Russian sources to the [Hillary] Clinton campaign,” “We will say that there was an attempt to use foreign sources with respect to the Clinton campaign,” Conaway said.
“It was clear that there was — at least Steele and however much he talked and didn’t talk to Russians — that’s foreigners and that information was paid for by the [Democratic National Committee] and the Clinton campaign,” Conaway said, adding, “I don’t have any direct evidence that they knew about it.”
Democrats now say that Republicans set the parameters on testimony at the behest of the White House, which was disputed by Conway saying that “Broad statement, you use subpoenas when you think you can actually get something from them, and we’re not particularly confident that the subpoena process will get us any more than we had,” he said. “We also think we have the evidence we need to come to the conclusions we’ve come to.”
