A report authored by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee was released on Friday, declaring that the panel found “no evidence” of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
The report, heavily redacted to prevent the release of classified information, is the culmination of a year-long investigation into charges that Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russians to influence the election.
The 253-page report says the committee “found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian government.” Democrats objected to the release of the report.
In a post on Twitter just moments after its release, President Trump praised the findings of the committee’s report.
But the report wasn’t all good news. The committee said it found “poor judgment and ill-considered actions by the Trump and Clinton campaign.” On the Trump side, the committee cited a June 2016 meeting between officials with the Trump campaign and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, “who falsely purported to have damaging information on the Clinton campaign.” The committee said that “demonstrated poor judgement.”
On the Clinton side, “The Committee also found that the Clinton campaign and the DNC, using a series of cutouts and intermediaries to obscure their roles, paid for opposition research on Trump obtained from Russian sources, including a litany of claims by high-ranking current and former Russian government officials,” the report said. “Some of this opposition research was used to produce sixteen memos, which comprise what has become known as the Steele dossier.”
Democrats on the House panel, meanwhile, wrote their own 99-page dissent to the committee’s official report, saying Republicans did not call key witnesses to testify and failed to issue necessary subpoenas to force testimony. “The majority hobbled the committee’s ability to conduct a credible investigation that could inspire public confidence,” the dissent said.