Representative Mike Conaway of Texas, a Republican member of the House intelligence committee, told reporters on Monday that the committee would not interview any more witnesses in its investigation of alleged collusion and that no collusion had happened.
“The bottom line: the Russians did commit active measures against our election in ’16, and we think they will do that in the future,” Conaway said.
“We disagree with the narrative that they were trying to help Trump.”
Last month, in indictments handed down by a grand jury comprised of citizens who had reviewed the evidence, Mueller described how 13 Russian citizens and three Russian organizations had allegedly sought to disrupt the 2016 election.
“By early to mid-2016,”
the indictment reads, “defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J Trump (‘Trump campaign’) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”
Conaway did not indicate what evidence the committee had collected that led it to contradict the Mueller indictment, which was built on intercepted emails, witness interviews and other evidence pointing to Russia as a culprit .
On a day when the White House press secretary declined to support the British prime minister Theresa May’s conclusion that
it is “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of the former spy
Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, Conaway argued vehemently against the notion that
the Trump campaign had cooperated with Russia to disrupt the presidential election.
“We found no evidence of collusion,” Conaway said. “We found
perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings. 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.”
Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat,
said on Sunday that
the House committee, which is not widely regarded as being at the spearhead of the investigation into Russia and Trump, had uncovered “circumstantial evidence of collusion”.
Evan McMullin, the 2016 independent presidential candidate who some Republicans hoped would lead a backlash against Trump that never materialized, called the Republican conduct “a low point”.
“
House Republicans failing to perform an honest investigation into Russia’s interference for President Trump marks a low point for Congress and political leadership in America,” McMullin wrote on Twitter.
“These congressmen are willing to protect their party and Trump at the expense of our sovereignty.”
House committee led by Trump ally...
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