House Republicans break with intelligence community on Russia, "NO TRUMP COLLUSION."

[Jack Fake]

(CNN)Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee reached an
opposite conclusion Monday from the intelligence community they
oversee, announcing that Russian President Vladimir Putin was
not trying to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election.

The Republicans also said they found no evidence that the Trump
campaign colluded with Russia and that they are shutting down
their yearlong investigation.

Their viewpoint -- which perfectly aligns with Trump's view on
election meddling -- will be met with sharp disagreement by
Democrats and is bound to inflame partisan tensions on a
committee that's been beleaguered by partisanship throughout its
Russia probe.

Trump seized on the news Monday evening, tweeting about it in
all capital letters.

"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," he said.

Donald J. Trump
?
@realDonaldTrump
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.

5:49 PM - Mar 12, 2018
70.1K
58.9K people are talking about this

The Republican decision to end the House Russia investigation
comes as special counsel Robert Mueller's probe appears to be
accelerating.

Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the Russia
investigation, said Monday that the committee had concluded its
interviews for the Russia investigation, and the Republican
staff had prepared a 150-page draft report that they would give
to Democrats to review on Tuesday morning.

The committee Republicans said Russians did meddle in the
elections to sow chaos, but they disagreed with the intelligence
community's assessment that they sought to help Trump.

"We found no evidence of collusion, and so we found perhaps some
bad judgment, inappropriate meetings," Conaway said. "We found
no evidence of any collusion of anything people were actually
doing other than taking a meeting they shouldn't have taken or
just inadvertently being in the same building."

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, slammed the
Republican decision to end the investigation.

"While the majority members of our committee have indicated for
some time that they have been under great pressure to end the
investigation, it is nonetheless another tragic milestone for
this Congress, and represents yet another capitulation to the
executive branch," Schiff said in a statement. "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."

The Senate Intelligence Committee is forging ahead with its
investigation into Russian election meddling. But Senate
Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr told CNN on Monday that he
had not yet seen any evidence of collusion or to substantiate
the intelligence community's assessment that Putin was trying to
help Trump win, though he said the committee was still
investigating and had not reached conclusions on either matter.

"I've read a lot about it, but I haven't seen any" evidence of
collusion, Burr said.

Asked about repeated efforts by Russians to coordinate with the
Trump campaign, Burr said: "It's collusion on part of the
Russians, I guess, but not the Trump campaign."

Burr would not say if he agreed with the Intelligence
Community's assessment that Putin tried to help Trump, calling
it simply "a 30-day snapshot."

"I don't think we've seen anything that would substantiate that
to this point," Burr said.

In the House, Democrats say there are still scores of witnesses
the committee should call, and argue that Republicans have
failed to use subpoenas to obtain documents and require
witnesses to answer questions that are central to the
investigation.
Conaway told reporters that he feels the committee has
investigated all avenues it needed to probe, and he argued that
the panel would not have been able to obtain the information
Democrats were seeking had they gone the route of subpoenaing
witnesses or trying to hold them in contempt.

Conaway, for instance, said the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting
between senior campaign officials and a Russian lawyer where
dirt on Clinton was promised was "ill-advised." But he said that
the committee did not turn up any evidence of collusion, arguing
the promoter who organized the meeting had exaggerated what the
Russians would provide.

The committee's report will conclude that they agree with 98% of
the intelligence community's January 2017 assessment that Russia
meddled in the 2016 election, according to a committee aide.

But the panel's Republicans take issue with the key finding that
Putin was trying get Trump elected.

"Bottom line: Russians did commit active measures against our
elections in '16, and we think they'll do that in the future,"
Conaway said. "It's clear they sowed discord in our elections.
... But we couldn't establish the same conclusions the CIA did
that they specifically wanted to help Trump."

A summary of the committee's initial findings states that the
committee found "concurrence with the Intelligence Community
Assessment's judgments, except with respect to Putin's supposed
preference for candidate Trump."

James Clapper, who was Director of National Intelligence in the
Obama administration when the assessment was released, said he
disagreed, noting that US intelligence found Putin had deep
animus toward Clinton and saw Trump as more friendly toward
Russia.

"I obviously disagree. The four intelligence chiefs all agreed
with the assessment, which was based on highly classified
intelligence," Clapper told CNN. "This is a case of people
living in their own reality bubbles when we can't agree on basic
facts."

The committee's Russia investigation included interviews with 73
witnesses and a review of roughly 300,000 pages of documents,
Conaway said. They included key figures like Donald Trump Jr.,
Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, but Democrats have argued that
those witnesses failed to fully provide documents or answer
important questions.

But Conaway said that Republicans would not hold Bannon in
contempt of Congress for failing to answer questions beyond what
was authorized by the White House, despite threats to do so just
several days ago. Conaway said such efforts -- and issuing
subpoenas to other witnesses as Democrats demanded -- would be a
fruitless endeavor.

"You use subpoenas when you think you can actually get something
from them," Conaway said. "We're not too confident that the
subpoena process would get us any more information than we have."

Conaway said he hopes that Democrats can work with Republicans
on the draft report, and he wants to take their feedback as they
shape the final report. He declined to put a timeline on when
the report would be made public, as the committee intends to
submit it to the intelligence community for declassification
beforehand.

Conaway said Democrats will agree with some elements of the
report, such as the social media interference, but he
acknowledged they'd take issue with others.

It's widely expected Democrats will draft their own report that
argues a case for collusion, as well as spells out all the
avenues the committee did not investigate.

In addition to subpoenas and witnesses, Democrats have long
raised issues about looking into Trump's finances, something the
committee had not probed. Conaway said he saw no "link" between
Trump's finances and the committee's investigation, and he did
not want to go on a fishing expedition.

The Republican report will also say how "anti-Trump research"
made its way from Russian sources to the Clinton campaign
through the opposition research dossier on Trump and Russia.
Conaway, however, stopped short of saying there was "collusion"
between Clinton's campaign and the Russians, something the
President has alleged.

The end of the Russia interviews is only the latest battleground
on the House Intelligence Committee, which has been consumed by
partisan fights for the better part of a year, from Chairman
Devin Nunes' role in the investigation and more recently over
competing memos about alleged surveillance abuses at the FBI
during the Obama administration.

Several Republicans on the panel have been signaling for several
weeks now that they're ready for the Russia investigation to
wrap up, arguing that Democrats are trying to extend the probe
into the campaign season.

"To me, I don't see anything else that's out there that hasn't
been explored," Rep. Pete King, a New York Republican, told CNN
last week.

But Democrats say the committee has raced through its final
interviews, while allowing witnesses to pick and choose which
questions they answer.

The committee issued a subpoena to former White House chief
strategist Bannon in January, but in his return testimony he
still did not answer questions about his time in the White House.

Democrats also sought subpoenas for the committee's last two
witnesses, outgoing White House communications director Hope
Hicks and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, but
Republicans did not issue them.

"There are a number of steps that I think any credible
investigator would say, 'These need to be done,' and we still
hope that they will be," Schiff said following Lewandowski's
interview last week.

Conaway downplayed the partisan tensions on the committee,
saying he and Schiff have "powered through" the issues. He noted
that since he took over the Russia probe for Nunes in April
2017, he has not visited the White House or spoken to the
President.

In the Senate, the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees are
still investigating Russia's alleged 2016 election meddling.
There are still two committees in the Senate that are
investigating Russia's 2016 election meddling: the Senate
Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

Still, only the Senate Intelligence Committee appears to be
pushing forward at full speed on its probe, as Senate Judiciary
Chairman Chuck Grassley is preparing to release transcripts of
the committee's interviews with participants of the June 2016
Trump Tower meeting -- a potential sign the committee is done
investigating that matter.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to put out
recommendations and hold a hearing on election security this
month.

Burr has said he's separating out the election security issues
for the 2018 primary season while the committee continues to
investigate questions about collusion and the 2016 election.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/politics/house-republicans-russia-
conclusions/index.html

[Jack Fate]

Jack Fake wrote:
> (CNN)Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee reached an
> opposite conclusion Monday from the intelligence community they
> oversee, announcing that Russian President Vladimir Putin was
> not trying to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election.

They investigated themselves and found no wrong doing. I bet you don't
thonk that's a bit suspicious.

[GLOBALIST]

TIME TO END THE BULLSHIT ABOUT RUSSIA RUNNING OUR COUNTRY

[Jack Fate]

Sorry, low IQ Dear Leader lover but it ain't over by a long shot. Now,
Benghazi was bullshit but you, a stupid jerk, defended it and when it
was proven to be bullshit, you became a silent as a priest in the choir
boys' dormitory.

[Tzatz Zikki]

On 3/13/2018 3:04 AM, Jack Ass wrote:

> They investigated themselves and found no wrong doing. I bet you don't
> thonk

I know you don't think.

"...but I will no longer be posting here. No one here is going to change
so, basically, I'm wasting the little time I have left by posting to
this obscure little group full of stupid bigoted and racist Trump
lovers."