Breaking with their House Republican counterparts, the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that the intelligence community properly concluded in January of last year that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to help Donald Trump when Moscow meddled in the 2016 election.
The Senate panel released a summary Tuesday of its examination of the intelligence community’s January 2017 assessment, which laid out the case of Russia’s election meddling and concluded that Putin was trying to help Trump win.
The Senate report said that the intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s intentions were sound, which is at odds with the House Intelligence Committee Republicans’ report that found “significant intelligence tradecraft failings” in the assessment of Putin’s objectives.
“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,” Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said in a statement, reiterating what he had initially said in May.
The unclassified summary released on Tuesday provides details on why the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed with the intelligence community that Russia was trying to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The conclusion has been affirmed by Trump’s entire national security team, but the President himself has repeatedly refused to state that Russia was meddling to help him.
“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump tweeted last week.
Trump’s assertion was given a boost in March by the House Intelligence Committee Republicans, who also stated in their report that they had no evidence of collusion between members of Trump’s team and Russian officials.
