Yesterday, the House Intelligence Committee, less the #Resistance, announced that they had concluded that there was no evidence the Trump campaign collaborated with the Russians and, furthermore, there was no evidence that the Russians gave a fat rat’s patootie about who won:
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.”
To me, at least, this is not a shock. The whole bullsh** story about Putin hating and fearing Clinton was only plausible if you totally ignored her activities while Secretary of State and the deep financial links between the Clinton Foundation and various people closely tied to the Kremlin. Mueller’s indictment of thirteen random Russians on specious charges spelled out how the Russians not only didn’t understand the U. S. electoral system, they funded people on both sides and organized anti-Trump rallies, one of which headlined Michael Moore. The House report takes us right back to the initial intelligence assessment, which was that the Russians wanted to cause chaos.
Adam Schiff had a little sad. The predictable people said predictably bad things about Devin Nunes.
Right after the announcement was made, Adam Schiff’s go-to guy at CNN, Manu Raju, talked to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr. Burr has been very critical of the in-fighting amongst the House Intelligence Committee and has done his best to maintain a collegial relationship with the ranking member, Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, who really should be a subject of a counterintelligence investigation instead of overseeing one.
MORE: Burr just told me he’s seen “NO” evidence of collusion yet and no evidence yet to substantiate 2017 IC assessment that Putin sought to aid Trump. Asked about efforts by Russians to coordinate w Trump camp, he said: “It’s collusion on part of the Russians not the Trump camp”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 12, 2018
This is precisely what the House says it found.
One has to assume that the intelligence community provided the House and Senate investigators with the same information that led Brennan to crap his drawers when he proclaimed that Russia had wanted Trump to win. Obviously, they didn’t see what the party hacks at CIA and DNI saw.
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