Senate Investigation into 2016 Russian Interference: It Happened!

Multiple sources are reporting that an investigation by the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee concluded that Russia did interfere. The AP writes:

"The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat, a Senate panel concluded Tuesday as it detailed in a report how associates of the Republican candidate had regular contact with Russians and expected to benefit from the Kremlin’s help. 

The report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, describes how Russia launched an aggressive, wide-ranging effort to interfere in the election on Donald Trump’s behalf. It says Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails that were hacked by Russian military intelligence officers. 

The conclusions mark the culmination of a bipartisan probe that spanned more than three years and produced what the committee called “the most comprehensive description to date of Russia’s activities and the threat they posed.” 

The findings echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, with the report’s unflinching characterization of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives contradicting the Republican president’s claims that the FBI had no basis to investigate whether his campaign was conspiring with Russia.  

A group of Republicans on the panel submitted “additional views” to the report saying that it should state more explicitly that Trump’s campaign did not coordinate with Russia. But Democrats on the panel submitted their own views, arguing that the report clearly shows such cooperation."

What was mildly surprising to me about this is that the GOP senators apparently decided to go with the overwhelming evidence of interference. They seemingly did not fabricate evidence to make the president's false claims of no Russian interference look real. I can only assume that was because there are some democrats on the intelligence committee.

Another authoritarian shoe I have been waiting to drop is the GOP resorting to fabricating evidence to make the president's dismal record look better. They might try to do that with the bogus investigation of Biden in the Ukraine. They could also try it in Barr's bogus DoJ investigation into the origins of the FBI investigation into Russian interference. Or, maybe GOP evidence fabrication will happen in the crackpot conspiracies the president likes to blither about, e.g., Obamagate, the president's false claim that Obama illegally spied on him in the 2016 election.