2016 ELECTION/GOP/HOUSE OF REPS/INTELLIGENCE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Republican lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee have drafted a report saying the panel’s yearlong probe into Russian election interference found no evidence that Moscow colluded with Donald Trump’s campaign or that the Kremlin favored Mr. Trump in the 2016 race.
The panel found ‘bad judgment’ and some ‘inappropriate meetings’ between members of the Trump campaign and Russians, but no sign that those amounted to collusion, said Rep. Mike Conaway (R., Texas), who has been heading the probe since last spring… In the 150-page draft report, which committee Democrats haven’t seen yet, Republicans wrote that Russia carried out an ‘active measures’ campaign in the 2016 election and was likely to do so again in future elections, but said they saw no sign that Moscow was seeking to help Mr. Trump, Mr. Conaway said.
The panel’s top Democrat, California Rep. Adam Schiff, in a statement Monday evening, called Republicans’ announcement a ‘tragic milestone for this Congress’ and ‘yet another capitulation to the executive branch.’… The draft report—the existence of which took Democrats by surprise on Monday—caps a highly contentious investigation in which Democratic lawmakers on the panel have repeatedly accused the Republican majority of a lack of thoroughness and for bowing to pressure from the White House to end a probe the president has referred to as a ‘witch hunt.’ “
-Rebecca Ballhaus and Byron Tau, “Republicans on House Panel Find No Collusion Between Russia and Trump Campaign,” The Wall Street Journal online, Mar. 12, 2018 10:27pm