putin was trying to tip the scale in favor of donald trump. that explicitly flies in the face of what the intelligence community said in their report in january of 2017. and still right now, today, say that they stand by, done by not political people, but career professionals. and that is going to be the very, very interesting thing to see how, when we see the full report, these republicans on the committee back that up. manu, do we know why that is their finding? well, i actually pushed mike conway on this in a briefing with reporters earlier, trying to understand why, how they came up with this assessment. all they would say right now, conway would say is that the evidence that they have seen in a classified setting, poring over the documents, the underlying assessment, they said that the underlying intelligence backing up that assessment just does not support the conclusion that was drawn in january of
vladimir putin, that the russians were trying to hurt hillary clinton. so, you know, perhaps it s just phrasing. if you hurt hillary clinton during a contested presidential election, that effectively helps donald trump. so whether or not they were trying to make donald trump president or trying to make sure that hillary clinton wasn t, it has the same result. dana, manu, thank you very much. appreciate it. thanks, don. joining me now is the former director of national intelligence. director clapper, thank you so much for joining us. the president just tweeted in all caps, the house intelligence committee has after a 14-month-long in-depth investigation found no evidence of collusion or coordination between the trump campaign and russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. is that the conclusion you would draw? well, first of all, on collusion, in our intelligence community assessment, we had nothing in there about any collusion. and as i ve said before, at the time i
and so, look, i think your point is exactly right. this has been the most partisan, the most dysfunctional, frankly, just disappointing for anybody who wants to really know what happened vis-a-vis russia, and more importantly, how it can be stopped in the future. and so, there are a lot of people around town, republicans and democrats, saying, good riddance. let s get this out. let s move on, and let s focus on the senate intelligence report and more importantly, perhaps the bob mueller investigation. right. but just to sort of hone in on one thing that ma nu said. the idea that the republicans said that they didn t find conclusion. you know, maybe bob mueller won t find collusion. the thing that is most surprising is the fact that this republican report explicitly says, according to these topline conclusions that they have released, that the primary goal that the russians had. in 2016 was to sow discord. fine, but also, that they saw that they do not believe that
2017. they contended that they need a more thorough investigation about this than the intelligence community, because they said the intelligence community did it in a short window, right after the elections, but they spent months and months and months poring over the documents. now, we ll have to see if that s actually the case, as dana said, when this report eventually comes out. because this is classified right now, it has to go through a declassification process. and we ll see what exactly they re referring to, because the intelligence community tonight, president trump s intelligence community tonight, is still standing by that assessment. the house republicans just are not. and can i just add one thing, don? i spoke to a republican member of this committee who has seen all the intelligence tonight. and this member insists that based on, just like manu was saying, based on what he has seen, it s a lot more gray than what the intelligence community put out in their report in janua