Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican running the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, acknowledged that Russia was, in fact, trying to hurt the chances of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — but he said whether one concludes it was designed to help Donald Trump get elected president is a “glass half full, glass half empty” thing.
Conaway responded to CNN questions about the GOP report announced Monday that concludes the intelligence community’s assessment did not have evidence supporting its finding that Trump was aided by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The GOP report concludes that they agree with 98% of the intelligence community’s January 2017 assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, according to a committee aide and finds “Concurrence with the Intelligence Community Assessment’s judgments, except with respect to Putin’s supposed preference for candidate Trump.”
The concern Republicans had, Conaway said, was with the “analytical tradecraft” the CIA used on that part of the assessment because the standards the CIA used “were not lived up to.”
Conaway said Putin “was trying to hurt her or make her more difficult to be an effective president.”
Asked how special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments of the Russians might make the case that the Russians sought to help Trump, he said “that is pretty irrelevant; we are doing our work.”