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WASHINGTON — Members of the 2016 Trump campaign represented a major counterintelligence risk to the U.S. due to their frequent contacts with individuals with close ties to the Russian government, a bipartisan Senate investigation has concluded.
The Senate Intelligence Committee released the fifth and final volume of its Russia investigation Tuesday. The report is nearly 1,000 pages and largely supports some of the key findings made by former special counsel Robert Mueller.
“ ‘The Committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.’ ”
Among other findings, the committee wrote that Russia took advantage of the inexperience in government of members of President Trump’s transition team and its opposition to Obama administration policies, as well as Trump’s desire to strengthen ties with Russia, “to pursue unofficial channels through which Russia could conduct diplomacy.”
“The lack of vetting of foreign interactions by Transition officials left the Transition open to influence and manipulation by foreign intelligence services, government leaders, and co-opted business executives,” the report wrote.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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