Senate Intel committee confirms Russia's attempt to swing election to Trump

Unlike the House Intelligence Committee's investigation of Russia's influence on our 2016 election -- which its Republican chairman David Nunes has turned into a back-channel means of leaking secret Justice Department documents to the White House -- the Senate Intelligence Committee continues a serious investigation.

In a just-released preliminary report about the overall question, they conclude that:
"The Senate Intelligence Committee has determined that the U.S. intelligence community was correct in assessing that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the aim of helping then-candidate Donald Trump."

It's important that they made this finding public, because the Republican majority of the corrupted House Intelligence Committee some weeks ago released it's supposed "final report" (not joined by its Democratic members) saying that there was no collusion with the Russians.   And, of course, Trump has been quoting that loudly and often, as though it were the sacred gospel.

Although the Democrats on the House committee released their own rebuttal to the majority report, having the full committee in the Senate give their findings on this overall conclusion at least helps to balance Nunes' shenanigans.   Trump will probably denounce the Senate report, but that won't make him right.

In a joint statement by the Senate committee's chair, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and it's vice chair, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), they said:   "We see no reason to dispute the [intelligence community's] conclusions."   And Sen. Warner added that the committee's staff had found the intelligence community's assessment to be accurate and on point.  "The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton," Sen. Warner added.

As reported in the Washington Post by Karoun Demirjian, this is the second of four interim findings the Senate Intelligence committee has said it will address before tackling the more consequential question of whether Trump and his associates colluded with Russia to influence the election’s outcome.  An earlier report had addressed election security;  a comprehensive final report is expected this fall.

"Although the Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to weigh in on the collusion allegations, Burr and Warner have hinted for days that their panel’s interim findings on the intelligence community would depart from those reached by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. 'I’m not sure that the House was required to substantiate every conclusion with facts,' Burr told reporters last week, promising the Senate panel would 'have the facts to show for' its conclusions.'

"Asked Wednesday about the discrepancy between the two panels’ conclusions, Rep. Devin P. Nunes (R-Calif.), the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman said, “That’s nice.” He declined to elaborate. . . . 

"House Democrats [on the House Intelligence Committee], who roundly disagreed with the House GOP’s findings, praised the Senate Intelligence Committee’s conclusions. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the House intelligence panel’s ranking member, said in a statement that he 'fully concur[s] with the conclusion of the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee that the [Intelligence Community Assessment's] determination that Russia sought to help the Trump campaign, hurt Hillary Clinton and sow discord in the United States is fully supported by the evidence.'

"On Wednesday, Senate Intelligence Committee members met in closed session to discuss their findings with former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., former CIA director John Brennan, and former National Security Agency director Adm. Mike Rogers. None has wavered from the conclusions about Russian interference in the election, according to senators who were in the room. . . ."

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In the overall history of insider political shenanigans, Nunes' corrupt collusion with the Trump administration to leak and distort evidence and findings may not be the worst we've ever had.    But it is shameful and a serious breakdown in our system of checks and balances between the three branches of government.

The House and the Senate Intelligence Committees have been the least influenced by politics until now.  It has been with a sense of pride that our representatives have taken this government function seriously and generally remained impartial.

The Senate Intel Committee still seems to be operating in a mostly non-partisan way;  that's not true of the House Intel Committee.   Chairman Nunes supposedly was pressured to recuse himself from the investigation;   but he continued to exert control over subpoenas -- and he actually flipped into becoming Donald Trump's protector and spy.

It's one more example among an astonishing consistency:    everything and everybody that comes into Trump's orbit seems to become corrupted -- and often sooner rather than later.    Along with our Democratic ranking members (Schiff in the House and Warner in the Senate) the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr stands out as a rare exception.    I suspect that his vice chair Sen. Warner was a great help and encouragement to him to remain impartial and focus on the facts and the law.

Ralph