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A new bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee reasserts the panel’s position that Russia launched an “unprecedented” election interference campaign in 2016 to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is chaired by Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina.
The 158-page, heavily redacted fourth volume of the Senate Intelligence panel’s ongoing investigation into Russian election interference and the US government’s response to it undermines the president’s years-long campaign to frame the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to aid Mr Trump as a “hoax” perpetrated by career US intelligence officials who do not like him.
The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) is “a sound intelligence product,” the Senate report concludes.
Tuesday’s report also keeps Mr Burr’s committee at odds with Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, who concluded in their own 253-page report in 2018 that intelligence officials exhibited “tradecraft failings” during their investigation and assessment of Russian election interference and Mr Putin’s motives.
The 2017 ICA “reflects strong tradecraft, sound analytical reasoning, and proper justification of disagreement in the one analytical line where it occurred,” the report concludes.
The Senate report also states that it found no evidence the US intelligence officials who compiled the 2017 ICA that found Russia interfered in 2016 to back Mr Trump were operating under political pressures or otherwise politically motivated.
“In all the interviews of those who drafted and prepared the ICA, the Committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions,” the report states. “All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper for the analytic process.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Burr commended the intelligence community’s work in 2017 and echoed its warning that Americans should be on guard for repeat efforts by the Kremlin in 2020 to spread misinformation before the presidential election on 3 November.
“One of the ICA’s most important conclusions was that Russia’s aggressive interference efforts should be considered ‘the new normal,” Mr Burr said.
“That warning has been borne out by the events of the last three years, as Russia and its imitators increasingly use information warfare to sow societal chaos and discord. With the 2020 presidential election approaching, it’s more important than ever that we remain vigilant against the threat of interference from hostile foreign actors,” he said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has not announced when it will release the fifth and final volume of its report, which, in total, is expected to be nearly 1,000 pages.
That final volume of the report could be the most politically sensitive one yet, as it will focus on US counterintelligence efforts in 2016, when Russia was trying to make contact with advisers on the Trump campaign, including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller reported last year that his team found “evidence of numerous links” between members of the Trump campaign and people with ties — or who claimed to have ties — to the Russian government.
Mr Mueller, however, declined to bring any charges against Mr Manafort, Mr. Kushner, Mr Trump, or any others on the campaign for their contacts with purported Russian agents over concerns that it would be difficult to prove to a jury they willfully broke campaign laws prohibiting such behaviour.
