The House Intelligence Committee will vote Thursday on the Republican members' Russia investigation report. The majority decided to end the Russia probe last week, claiming investigators had found no evidence of collusion. Democrats, in response, issued a 21-page status report detailing the vast amount of work left undone.
The GOP report, whose public release remains weeks away pending redactions from the U.S. intelligence community, has come to represent the deeply partisan divisions that have overtaken the probe. The panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), has already denounced the document, which concludes the Republicans found no evidence of collusion and criticizes the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia sought to help Trump. Democrats have pledged to press on with the investigation alone — but Republicans say they are planning to move on to other matters, including new probes of alleged anti-Trump activities at federal law enforcement agencies and the State Department.
(...)
“What’s happening now I’ve never seen before,” said retired Gen. Michael Hayden, director of the National Security Agency under presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, and director of the CIA under presidents Bush and Obama. “What’s happening now is that many members of the president’s party on the committee are aligned with the president to make war on the president’s own security establishments . . . . It’s taken the partisanship to a place it’s never been.”
Read more: ‘It’s taken partisanship to a place it’s never been.’ Inside the House Intelligence Committee. (WaPo)