House committee OKs GOP report ending Russia meddling probe

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., followed by Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, and Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, far left, leave the secure area where the panel was wrapping up its inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 22, 2018.  (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., followed by Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, and Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, far left, leave the secure area where the panel was wrapping up its inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 22, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House intelligence committee voted Thursday to approve its final report into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, ending its inquiry and giving a final endorsement to the GOP conclusion there was no coordination between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

The full Republican-written report will be released to the public after intelligence agencies conduct a classification review, which could take weeks.

The document is likely to please Trump but is fiercely opposed by committee Democrats, all of whom voted against approving it. The Democrats said the investigation was shut down too quickly and the committee has not interviewed enough witnesses or gathered enough evidence to make such a definitive assessment.

After the vote, Republicans released a summary of 44 findings, including conclusions there were Russian cyberattacks on U.S. political institutions and Russians leveraged social media in the U.S. to sow discord. The report echoes GOP criticism of the Justice Department and intelligence agencies.

On the subject of collusion, the report says “when asked directly, none of the interviewed witnesses provided evidence of collusion, coordination or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.” The Republicans said they found no evidence Trump’s “pre-campaign business dealings” formed any basis for collusion.

The report also appears to try and clear numerous Trump associates from wrongdoing.

The GOP document says there’s no evidence Trump associates had anything to do with hacked emails stolen from Democrats during the campaign, though it does mention “numerous ill-advised contacts with WikiLeaks.” The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., messaged with WikiLeaks during the campaign.

An assessment released in January 2017 by U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Russian military intelligence provided hacked information from the Democratic National Committee and Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has denied Russia was the source of emails it released.

The report also concludes there’s no evidence Trump Jr. discussed the election with a Russian official he met at an National Rifle Association meeting in 2016, and says the younger Trump and other campaign officials did not receive any derogatory information about Democrat Hillary Clinton at a June 2016 meeting with Russians in Trump Tower. Emails showed Trump Jr. and others attended that meeting with the expectation of receiving such information.

The committee concluded meetings between the Russian ambassador in Washington and Trump campaign officials, including now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, did not represent coordination with Russia in any way. Sessions was also interviewed by the committee.

The report addresses “possible Russian efforts to set up a ‘back channel’” with Trump associates after the campaign and implies it couldn’t have been nefarious. The Republicans said if that did happen, it suggests “the absence of collusion during the campaign, since the communication associated with collusion would have rendered such a ‘back channel’ unnecessary.”

On Carter Page, a onetime Trump campaign official who was the subject of a disputed secret surveillance warrant, the committee concluded that a July 2016 trip to Moscow wasn’t on behalf of the Trump campaign. However, the findings say the committee is “concerned about his seemingly incomplete accounts of his activity in Moscow.”

Texas Rep. Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the House investigation, said in an interview with the Associated Press that the committee wanted to get the report out as the 2018 campaign season begins.

On collusion and coordination, Conaway said, “We could not find a thread to follow that made sense.”

After the committee vote, the top Democrat, California Rep. Adam Schiff, said he had hoped Thursday’s closed-door meeting could have been public.

“It is a rather sad chapter in our committee’s long history with the ending of the majority’s participation in the investigation, that ending taking place in secret session for no reason at all except a desire to avoid public scrutiny of this decision, to curtail an investigation into one of the most serious intrusions into our democracy and our history,” Schiff said.

Democrats will have their own report and said they will continue to investigate the meddling. They have already set up at least one interview: Chris Wylie, a former employee of a political data-mining firm that obtained information from Facebook users without their consent. The firm, Cambridge Analytica, worked for the Trump campaign.