How a Senate panel went beyond Mueller in documenting Trump campaign contacts with Russia

CNN — The Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation was nearly over before it began. It was the first of many disagreements Burr and Warner would work through over the course of the committee’s three-and-a-half-year investigation, which culminated last week in the release of a massive report providing the most detailed look to date at the extensive nexus between Trump associates and Russian officials during and after the 2016 election. “There was a lot of give and take, a lot of times it was hard – they deserve the lion’s share of the credit.” The Senate Intelligence Committee was one of several congressional panels that scrutinized the Trump campaign and Russia beginning in 2017, but it was the only one that managed to complete its investigation with Democrats and Republicans still on the same page. Trump’s May 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey added to Burr’s sense of urgency to pursue the probe, sources said, and the committee landed Comey’s blockbuster public testimony a month later. The facts presented in Volume 5 make this conclusion abundantly clear, however I voted against the report because it fails to explicitly state this critical finding.” King, who did not join the Democrats’ additional views, said that “the feeling was, if we were going to avoid a partisan train wreck, the way to do it was to simply state the facts and let people make their own decisions and draw their own conclusions.” Getting the report out the door Sources familiar with the investigation say the final volume of the report was released as quickly as the committee could finish it.