Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


Senate Panel Agrees Russia Tried to Help Trump

by VOA News

   The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that the
   intelligence community was correct in its finding that Russian
   President Vladimir Putin was trying to help Donald Trump when Moscow
   meddled in the 2016 presidential election.

   The bipartisan report released Tuesday disagrees with the findings of
   the House Intelligence Committee Republicans, who found that the
   intelligence community was mistaken to conclude that Moscow wanted
   Trump to win.

   "The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources,
   tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community
   Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions," a statement
   from Republican Senator Richard Burr, the panel's chairman, said.

   The Senate panel found that the "intelligence community assessment
   (ICA)" is a "sound intelligence production."

   "A body of reporting, to include different intelligence disciplines,
   open source reporting on Russian leadership policy preferences, and
   Russian media content, showed that Moscow sought to denigrate (former)
   Secretary (of State Hillary) Clinton," the unclassified summary of the
   report says.

   The committee found that the slight differences in the findings of the
   CIA, FBI and the NSA were "reasonable, transparent and openly debated
   among the agencies and analysts."

   Trump has strongly disagreed with the findings of the ICA, repeatedly
   touting Russian denials of meddling. "Russia continues to say they had
   nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!" Trump tweeted last week.

   VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this
   report.