For the last two years, Democrats and their media allies have searched every nook and cranny for alleged “collusion” between the Russian government and the 2016 Trump campaign team.
But as expected, that search may very well have been for naught, as the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee has now stated publicly that despite their best efforts, no direct evidence of any sort of conspiracy between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin has been uncovered.
“Is anybody really surprised?”
NBC News reported that after two years of digging, more than 200 witness interviews, and reviews of more than 300,000 documents, the committee — led by Republican North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr and ranking Democrat Virginia Sen. Mark Warner — has come up short.
“If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia,” Burr told CBS last week.
He later signaled that his committee is on the verge of wrapping up the investigation and issuing a final bipartisan report, though he admitted that process could still take some time.
“If I can finish tomorrow, I would finish tomorrow,” he said. “We know we’re getting to the bottom of the barrel because there’re not new questions that we’re searching for answers to.”
President Trump heralded the news from the committee in a tweet on Sunday, asking: “Is anybody really surprised by this?”
Senator Richard Burr, The Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, just announced that after almost two years, more than two hundred interviews, and thousands of documents, they have found NO COLLUSION BETWEEN TRUMP AND RUSSIA! Is anybody really surprised by this?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2019
“No factual evidence”
But while Sen. Warner was a bit more circumspect in drawing any final conclusions on the collusion question, even some Democratic staffers quietly (and anonymously) admitted to NBC that no conclusive evidence had been found — and it doesn’t look like it will be, either.
Indeed, Chairman Burr reiterated to NBC on Tuesday: “There is no factual evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
But while it appears that Burr’s Senate Intelligence Committee is about to conclude their investigation without finding any evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, Trump is not entirely out of the woods yet.
As the Robert Mueller-led special counsel probe remains ongoing, the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee is reopening and launching new investigations into Trump. Meanwhile, liberal-leaning prosecutors in New York are digging deep for anything with which they could charge the president.
But with no indictments for Trump or any of his family members, and with the Senate Intel Committee wrapping up their probe without finding any evidence of wrongdoing, it increasingly seems that Democrats are on the wrong side of this witch hunt. When will Trump finally be free to lead the country without all of these distractions?