The
House Intelligence Committee has voted to formally end its Russia
probe. Lawmakers found no evidence of collusion between associates of
President Donald Trump and Russia.
The
committee also voted to release the report, which was authored by
Republicans. It will first be sent to the intelligence community so
that classified material can be redacted, but is expected to be made
public within weeks.
The
report recommends a crackdown on administrative leaks including the
introduction of “mandatory polygraphs” for officials who have top
secret security clearance. It also accuses former Obama
administration intelligence director James Clapper of providing
“inconsistent testimony” regarding his contacts with the media.
In a
summary of its findings, the committee said that some Trump
associates had “ill-advised” contact with WikiLeaks but concluded
that there was “no evidence of collusion between President Donald
Trump’s associates and the Kremlin.”
The
committee spoke to more than 70 witnesses during the course of the
investigation, which was launched in January last year. It heard from
many prominent Trump administration figures including Donald Trump
Jr., Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon. It also reviewed more than
300,000 documents.
Democrats
have complained that Republicans on the committee failed to subpoena
documents, interview key people or force uncooperative witnesses to
answer questions. “It really is a fundamentally flawed document and
there’s not much that can rescue it,” California Democrat Adam
Schiff said after the vote.
In a
statement after the committee approved the report chairman Devin
Nunes said the report “provides specific findings and
recommendations to improve our election security before the mid-term
elections.”
Speaking
shortly before the completion of the probe, committee member Michael
Conaway said it would take the writer of a spy thriller to turn the
“inadvertent contacts” between Trump associates and Russian
officials into evidence of collusion.
"We
found no evidence of collusion. We found perhaps some bad judgment,
inappropriate meetings,” the Texas Republican, who led the
investigation, explained. “But only Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or
someone else like that could take these series of inadvertent
contacts with each other, meetings, whatever, and weave that into
some sort of a fiction and turn it into a page-turner, spy thriller.”
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