The Senate Intelligence Committee strongly backed the finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, ultimately intending to help Donald Trump win.
"The committee concurs with intelligence and open-source assessments that this influence campaign was approved by President Putin," the panel said Tuesday in a report that endorsed as "sound" the intelligence findings issued in January 2017. The committee said there was a body of intelligence "to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump."
The Senate panel, which has sustained the only major bipartisan investigation into Russian meddling, forcefully rejected a campaign led by House Republicans and President Trump, who have contended that anti-Trump bias tainted the Russia inquiry from the start.