House Intelligence Committee Republicans deliberately ignored the obvious - By Max Boot
It’s amazing how hard it is to find something when you are not looking for it — if, in fact, you are trying to hide it. After spending the last year pretending to investigate connections between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee ended the charade on Monday by announcing that there was “no evidence of collusion.” Even more incredibly, the GOP majority said there was no evidence that the Russians had been trying to elect President Trump — an assertion contradicted by the U.S. intelligence community and a federal grand jury that indicted 13 Russians for alleged involvement in this operation.
How did the Republicans miss what is evident to everyone else? By shutting their eyes and closing their ears. As Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat, noted, the Republicans didn’t compel testimony from important witnesses and didn’t subpoena important records. The Republicans were engaged not in an investigation but a coverup. They sought to exonerate Trump and smear the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Chairman Devin Nunes (R.-Calif.) made himself a laughingstock by claiming there was a deep-state conspiracy against the president.
What might the Republicans have found if they were interested in looking? (A shocking idea, I know.) It’s impossible to say for sure, but the public record, summarized by The Post’s Philip Bump, provides compelling, if circumstantial, evidence of collusion.
Former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is now a cooperating witness, said that on or about April 26, 2016, he learned from a professor close to the Kremlin that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, including “thousands of emails.” Papadopoulos relayed to the campaign offers of Russian “cooperation.”
On June 9, 2016, the entire high command of the Trump campaign, including Paul Manafort (himself linked financially to the Russian oligarchy), Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, met at Trump Tower with a lawyer from Moscow promising to “incriminate” Clinton. Six days later, Democratic National Committee documents stolen by Russian hackers began surfacing on the Web via a hacker named Guccifer 2.0. Early in July, Trump staffers removed language from the GOP platform calling for arming Ukraine to resist Russian aggression. On July 22, the eve of the Democratic convention, WikiLeaks begins releasing stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/03/13/house-intelligence-committee-republicans-deliberately-ignored-the-obvious/?utm_term=.05c62ba44e0a
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