Reporter Sara Carter has revealed some of what can be found in the House Intel Committee’s final report. Rep Devin Nunes, chairman of the committee has released the report to the committee and has submitted it for redactions before the report can be released to the public.
That could take months. The important takeaways from the report is that there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The report also deals harshly with leaks. Some of which is said to have endangered lives and damaged national security.
The report also noted that the number of leaks increased greatly after Trump won the election.
Several of the leaks uses identical language to the Intelligence Community Assessment,” which had not been released at that time. It also found that James Clapper had not been truthful when he testified that he had not talked to the press until after he left his post.
In fact, it is widely suspected that he had been the leaker all along with most of the leaks going to CNN where Clapper is now employed.
The parameters of the investigation, which was announced in March 2017, were based on four key questions:
- What Russian cyber activity and other active measures were directed against the United States and its allies?
- Did the Russian active measures include links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns or any other U.S. Persons?
- What was the U.S. Government’s response to these Russian active measures and what do we need to do to protect ourselves and our allies in the future?
- What possible leaks of classified information took place related to the Intelligence Community Assessment of these matters?
Intelligence Community Assessment of Leaks:
- Leaks of classified information regarding Russian intentions to sow discord in the U.S. presidential election began prior to the election day – Nov. 8, 2016.
- Leaks of classified information alleging Russian intentions to help elect candidate Trump increased dramatically after election day – Nov. 8, 2016.
- The leaks prior to the classified Intelligence Community Assessment’s publication, particularly leaks occurring after the U.S. presidential election, correlate to specific language found in the Intelligence Community Assessment.
- Continued leaks of classified information have damaged national security and have potentially endangered lives.
- Former Director of National Security James Clapper, now a CNN national security analyst, provided inconsistent testimony to the committee about his contacts with the media, including CNN.
House Intelligence Committee Investigation No Evidence of Trump Campaign Links to Russia:
- Former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI regarding his December 2016 conversation to former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, even though the agents who interviewed him didn’t believe he was lying.
- Executive Branch officials did not notify the Trump campaign that members of the campaign were assessed to be potential national security concerns.
- None of the witnesses interviewed provided any evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign or the Russian government.
- The committee found no evidence of Trump’s pre-campaign business dealings would have formed collusion with Russia.
- The opposition to Trump from members of the national security establishment left the Trump campaign with little selection of experts and to the hiring of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos
The committee did find sufficient evidence that Russia tried to sow chaos during the campaign but that there was no collusion with Trump or anyone associated with his campaign. Ranking member (And boy, is he rank) Adam Schiff has been singing the blues because the investigation only lasted fourteen months and despite the fact that no evidence was found on collusion, wanted to continue to investigate Trump.
They didn’t need to spend fourteen months on this. I could have told them from Day 1 that this was just “Wag the Dog” on the part of the Democrats.