House Intelligence Committee Republicans voted Thursday to end their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, declaring that a string of contacts between Donald Trump's associates and Russian government affiliates fell short of collusion and recommending dramatic new steps to crack down on intelligence leaks.

In a summary of their findings, committee Republicans cataloged a string of meetings between Trump associates — from Donald Trump Jr.'s run-in with a Russian government official at a 2016 National Rifle Association event to what the report called "possible" attempts by Moscow to set up a back channel with Trump's transition team after the election.

The committee dinged Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, for providing an "incomplete" account of his July 2016 trip to Moscow, which drew FBI investigators' interest. And the report said Trump associates had "ill-advised" contacts with WikiLeaks, the online platform that intelligence agencies say aided Russia's attempt to disseminate hacked Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails.

But in each case, the report's Republican authors concluded that the evidence failed to amount to active cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. In some cases, they said the evidence undermined claims by the president's opponents that his campaign may have colluded with Moscow to win the 2016 election.

"Possible Russian efforts to set up a 'back channel' with Trump associates after the election suggest the absence of collusion during the campaign, since the communication associated with collusion would have rendered such a 'back channel' unnecessary," the GOP summary said.

The report also accuses former Obama administration intelligence director James Clapper of providing "inconsistent testimony" about his contacts with the media. And it recommends a crackdown on leaks, including administering "mandatory polygraphs" to some administration officials with top secret security clearances and stiffening legal penalties for "unauthorized disclosures of classified information."

The report comes amid a bitter split on the House Intelligence panel, as Democrats claim the committee's Republican members sought to protect the president by cutting off the investigation without interviewing key people, forcing recalcitrant witnesses to answer questions or subpoenaing documents. Democrats fear the report could distract from the work of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is separately probing Russian meddling in the 2016 election and any involvement by Trump's team.

"It really is a fundamentally flawed document and there’s not much that can rescue it," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said after the vote Thursday.

The report was outlined last week by the panel's top Russia investigator, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who said it would confirm the intelligence community's finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election but break from the agencies' conclusion that the Kremlin preferred a Trump victory. That finding split Republicans on the panel last week, several of whom took issue with undermining aspects of the intelligence community's findings. Conaway has emphasized that the report doesn't reject those findings but criticizes the methodology the agencies used to reach it.

Republicans exiting the meeting Thursday declined to discuss their decision and whether they had made any significant changes to the document since they first described its findings.

The committee Republicans concluded that Russia was responsible for attacks on American political institutions throughout 2015 and 2016, part of a pattern of attacks on Western democracies, leveraging social media to sow discord and mounting cyber operations that "continue to present a profound threat."

The committee also found that the American response to Russia's attack was lacking — including insufficient warning by the FBI to victims of Russia's cyberattacks. It also found that the Trump campaign wasn't warned that some of its officials were considered "counterintelligence concerns."

Among the recommendations was a proposal to repeal the Logan Act, an obscure 18th century statute that criminalizes efforts by private citizens to interfere in U.S. foreign policy. The law was cited by Trump administration critics as questions arose about former national security adviser Michael Flynn's pre-inauguration contact with Russia's ambassador. Trump allies have argued that the law was dusted off to use as a pretense to embroil Flynn in legal jeopardy.

The panel raised questions about the sourcing in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, which alleged an intricate plot by the Kremlin to help elect Trump. But it said Page, the former Trump campaign adviser whose Moscow trip was described by the dossier, was not forthcoming in explaining his expedition.

Page told POLITICO he had "no idea" why the committee questioned his account of his trip, for which he answered questions in an interview that lasted nearly a full day.

"Unlike the dishonest people who concocted the Dodgy Dossier and used every sneaky legal trick in the book to avoid answering HPSCI's questions related to the lies from their smear campaign, which they distributed about me in 2016," he said, "I spent an entire day getting grilled by them on the Hill last November. That’s not to mention the countless documents I sent them. So I have no idea."

This article was originally published by "Politico" -