Tag: Senate Intelligence Committee

How Marco Rubio turned the Senate Intel Committee into a Trump defensive team

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When Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took over as acting chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the spring of 2020, he refocused the committee’s long-running investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Rubio turned the committee away from dispassionately investigating the myriad connections between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s campaign into a Republican defense line between the compromised former president and the American public. Instead, Rubio aligned the committee with the Trump Administration itself, politicizing intelligence, downplaying Russian interference, white-washing Trump-Kremlin contacts and purposely deflecting attention from Russia to China.

Soon, Rubio publicly sparred with the committee vice chairman, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), over how much to reveal to the people before the 2020 election. They issued a heavily redacted fifth and final 950-page volume of the committee’s work on Aug. 18, just 77 days before Election Day. Continue reading.

Senate Intel chair privately warned that GOP’s Biden probe could help Russia

Richard Burr’s discussion with Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley highlights the divide among Republicans over the Biden investigation.

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee has privately expressed concerns about his colleagues’ corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, further exposing divisions within the GOP over whether to continue pursuing an effort that led in part to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

In a Dec. 5 meeting, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told the leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Finance committees — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, respectively — that their probe targeting Biden could aid Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system, according to two congressional sources familiar with the meeting.

The meeting took place as the House was charging forward with impeachment articles against Trump over an alleged effort to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rivals, including the former vice president and his son Hunter. And it underscores disagreements among Senate Republicans over the merits of a Biden investigation. Continue reading.

African Americans top targets of 2016 Russian info warfare, Senate panel finds

Panel says campaigns, media outlets need to verify source of viral social media posts before sharing

The Senate Intelligence Committee has confirmed the extent of the Russian government’s expertise at exploiting racial divisions in America.

Among the key takeaways of the second volume of the committee’s study of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election is the extent to which minorities were targeted.

“No single group of Americans was targeted by [Internet Research Agency] information operatives more than African-Americans. By far, race and related issues were the preferred target of the information warfare campaign designed to divide the country in 2016,” the unclassified version of the report from the intelligence panel said.

View the complete October 8 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.

Senate Intel releases 2nd volume of report on 2016 Russian interference

Axios logoThe Senate Intelligence Committee released Tuesday the second volume of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which focuses on the social media disinformation campaign led by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency.

Why it matters: The report, which provides further bipartisan evidence of Russia’s election meddling in 2016, finds “the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.”

    • It also says that the IRA’s activities were “part of a broader, sophisticated, and ongoing information warfare campaign designed to sow discord in American politics and society” and that IRA activity increased, rather than decreased, after Election Day 2016.

View the complete October 8 article by Zachary Basu on the Axios website here.

 

Senate Intel finds ‘extensive’ Russian election interference going back to 2014

The Hill logoThe Senate Intelligence Committee has released its long-awaited bipartisan report on election security and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Among the key findings of the report, the committee writes that “the Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure at the state and local level.”

The report is heavily redacted in some areas and is 67 pages. The Senate panel, which has been investigating Russian interference for more than two years, released a summary version of its election security findings in May 2018.

The panel released its redacted report one day after former special counsel Robert Mueller appeared on Capitol Hill to testify about his own 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump.

View the complete July 25 article by Morgan Chalfant and Maggie Miller on The Hill website here.

Trump Jr. reaches deal to testify with Senate Intelligence

Donald Trump Jr. has agreed to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a second round of questions, complying with a subpoena from Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who came under fire from fellow Republicans for demanding the testimony.

Trump Jr. struck the deal Tuesday to interview with the panel next month for between two and four hours. The committee had originally a set a 5 p.m. deadline on Monday for him to respond.

Questions about the Trump Tower project in Moscow and the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya are fair game, according to a source who was briefed on the deal.

View the complete May 14 article by Jonathan Easley and Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Scoop: Senate Intel subpoenas Trump Jr. over Russia matters

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to answer questions about his previous testimony before Senate investigators in relation to the Russia investigation, sources with direct knowledge told Axios.

Why it matters: It’s the first congressional subpoena — that we know about — of one of President Trump’s children. The subpoena sets up a fight that’s unprecedented in the Trump era: A Republican committee chair pit against the Republican president’s eldest son.

  • It’s also a sign that the Russia investigations in Congress aren’t over despite the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying it’s time to move on from the Russia probe.
  • A Senate Intelligence Committee spokesperson told Axios: “We do not discuss the details of witness engagements with the Committee. Throughout the investigation, the Committee has reserved the right to recall witnesses for additional testimony as needed, as every witness and witness counsel has been made aware.”
  • “Don and Senate Intel agreed from the very beginning that he would appear once to testify before the committee and would remain for as long as it took to answer all of their questions. He did that. We’re not sure why we’re fighting with Republicans,” a source close to Trump Jr. told Axios.

View the complete May 8 article by Jonathan Swan, Alayna Treene and David Nather on the Axios website here.

Drama hits Senate Intel panel’s Russia inquiry

Drama is building around the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation after the panel’s top Republican and Democrat clashed over what their findings reveal two years after they opened their inquiry.

The Senate probe is viewed as the most bipartisan congressional investigation into Russian interference, with committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) walking in lockstep on most matters.

However, fractures have emerged recently after Burr publicly stated that none of their evidence indicates the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.

View the complete February 14 article by Olivia beavers and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep

Some of the Facebook ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process and stir up tensions around divisive social issues. Credit: Jon Elswick, AP

The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to analyze the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.

The report, obtained by The Washington Post before its official release Monday, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel also released a second independent report studying the 2016 election Monday. Lawmakers said the findings “do not necessarily represent the views” of the panel or its members.

The first report — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details of how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for interfering in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.

View the complete December 17 article by Craig Timberg and Tony Romm on The Washington Post website here.

Congress to Trump, basically: Russia is not fake news

The following article by Amber Phillips was posted on the Washington Post website October 5, 2017:

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-S.C.) said Oct. 4 “we have not come to any final conclusions” about the Russia investigation but that they are still looking into multiple areas of interest. (Reuters)

This post has been updated with Trump’s latest tweet about the Russia investigation. 

As recently as two weeks ago, the president called the allegations that Russia helped him win the 2016 election a hoax. Continue reading “Congress to Trump, basically: Russia is not fake news”