Unlike the House Intelligence Committee, which ended its investigation into Russian election meddling by fully embracing Trump’s conspiracy theory laden accusations of political influence and bias against him in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that the intelligence community accurately assessed the situation in their reporting.
NEW: The Senate Intelligence Committee just released a bipartisan report concurring w/ intel community that 1) Russia interfered; 2) Putin approved it; & 3) The goal was to sow chaos & help Trump's election chances.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to deny it.https://t.co/6AB5l6Uote pic.twitter.com/64MAK5ST7b
— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) July 3, 2018
While the House committee questioned the source materials used to make the assessment, which they insisted was the infamous Steele dossier, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a statement that noted that this was not possible “because it was unverified information and had not been disseminated as serialized intelligence reporting.”
‘The Committee found that this judgment was supported by the evidence presented in the ICA. Since its publication, further details have come to light that bolster the assessment.’
Bipartisan report from Senate Intel Committee says Russians interfered to help Trump win. Hey @DevinNunes you should read the report and learn how to conduct a real investigation. https://t.co/4nn32Mj3VA
— Andrew Janz (@JanzAndrew) July 3, 2018
As recently as Thursday, Trump continued to disagree and push more conspiracy theories ahead of his planned summit with Vladimir Putin.
Despite their election interference, Trump has called for Russia to be added back to the G7 and has pushed for trade policies like NATO to be disbanded, which fall right in line with Putin’s agenda. Trump may be unwilling to acknowledge the attempts by the Kremlin, but the Senate committee was not.
‘The Committee concurs with intelligence and open-source assessments that this influence campaign was approved by President Putin…The ICA relies 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 to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump.’
INBOX: The Senate Intelligence Committee releases its summary of findings on the Jan. 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russia.
"The Committee finds that the overall judgments issued in the ICA were well-supported and the tradecraft was strong.” https://t.co/IYGqRlI7kW pic.twitter.com/sgMGLQKEwq
— Emma Loop (@LoopEmma) July 3, 2018
Featured image via Getty/The Washington Post
