Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, confirmed in an interview Tuesday that Democrats on the committee would be releasing their own report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The minority report, according to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, who interviewed Schiff, will both “seek to rebut the GOP conclusions” and “detail all the investigative avenues that House Republicans declined to take — the interviews that they didn’t conduct, and the leads that they didn’t try to chase down and verify.”
Schiff told Sargent that the report will feature information that Republicans “didn’t permit to influence their conclusions,” in Sargent’s words.
“There’s no way for them to reach the conclusions that they want to start with unless they ignore or mischaracterize what we’ve been able to learn,” Schiff told Sargent.
“We will be presenting evidence of collusion, some of which is in the public domain and apparent to everyone willing to see it, and other facts that have not yet come to public light,” Schiff said separately. “I fully expect that the majority will omit many of these facts in its report and mischaracterize others.”
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), who led the committee’s investigation, announced Monday that it had concluded the interview and document-gathering portion of the investigation, and that Republicans would share their draft report with Democrats on Tuesday.
According to a one-page summary of the draft report, Republicans on the committee found “no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” and concurred with “the Intelligence Community Assessment’s judgments, except with respect to Putin’s supposed preference for candidate Trump.”
In a statement Monday, Schiff lambasted committee Republicans’ actions as yet “another capitulation to the executive branch.”
Notably, Schiff told Sargent that he expected the Democrats’ report would “be on a similar page to the analysis by the Senate [Intelligence Committee].” That committee’s probe is seen as less plagued by partisan rancor.
“House Republicans are likely to be out on a political lark,” Schiff said.
