Senate Report Concludes Putin Behind 2016 Russian Campaign To Interfere With US Elections

US media is report­ing on a new Sen­ate bipar­ti­san report detail­ing the results of an inves­ti­ga­tion into Russ­ian efforts to inter­fere with the 2016 US elec­tions. Accord­ing to the ABC News report, the pan­el con­clud­ed that Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Putin ordered the hack­ing and dis­in­for­ma­tion effort by the Russians:

A new bipar­ti­san report released by a Sen­ate pan­el Tues­day out­lines per­haps the most detailed account­ing to date of Russia’s efforts to inter­fere in the 2016 elec­tion while accus­ing the White House and oth­ers close to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump of refus­ing to coop­er­ate with an inves­ti­ga­tion into whether the president’s cam­paign sim­ply ben­e­fit­ed or sought to aid Russia’s efforts. The nearly‑1,000 page report from the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, its fifth and final exam­i­na­tion of a years-long effort to probe Russ­ian med­dling in 2016, describes sev­er­al episodes in which Trump and mem­bers of his cam­paign were keen to accept Russia’s help — and in some instances goes fur­ther than even for­mer spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller in detail­ing ties between the cam­paign and Russ­ian indi­vid­u­als. How­ev­er, like Mueller’s report released last year, the Sen­ate com­mit­tee does not allege any crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy between Trump or mem­bers of his cam­paign and Rus­sia. And in agree­ment with the intel­li­gence community’s 2017 assess­ment on Russia’s inter­fer­ence, the report states defin­i­tive­ly that Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin “ordered the Russ­ian effort to hack com­put­er net­works and accounts affil­i­at­ed with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and leak infor­ma­tion dam­ag­ing to Hillary Clin­ton and her cam­paign for pres­i­dent.” While the report was bipar­ti­san in nature, upon its release both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats quick­ly split in their deter­mi­na­tion of what the committee’s key find­ings were. An index authored by Democ­rats on the com­mit­tee argued the report “unam­bigu­ous­ly shows that mem­bers of the Trump Cam­paign coop­er­at­ed with Russ­ian efforts to get Trump elect­ed.” The committee’s Repub­li­cans, on the oth­er hand, said in a sep­a­rate state­ment that “after more than three years of inves­ti­ga­tion by this Com­mit­tee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no col­lu­sion” between the Trump cam­paign and Russia.

Read there rest here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed ear­li­er that accord­ing to US Intel­li­gence, Putin and his top aides are “prob­a­bly direct­ing” a Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tion direct­ed against the cam­paign of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Joe Biden.