Speaker of the House Paul Ryan broke with President Donald Trump Tuesday morning, stating that Russia did interfere in the U.S. 2016 elections – but in a gift to Trump, he falsely claimed a “year-long investigation” proved Russia’s interference did not have an effect on the outcome of the election.
“We just conducted a year-long investigation into Russia’s interference in our elections,” Speaker Ryan told reporters. “They did interfere in our elections. It’s really clear. There should be no doubt about that.”
But Ryan continued, wrongly claiming that it’s “also clear” that Russia’s interference “didn’t have a material effect on our elections.”
That is a false GOP talking point, one that even CIA Director Mike Pompeo stated, and the CIA moved quickly to correct.
The U.S. intelligence community did “not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election,” CNN, quoting a declassified public report issued by the Director of National Intelligence, reported.
The consensus of the U.S. Intelligence agencies is that Russia absolutely interfered in the 2016 elections, but they did not investigate if Russia’s actions had any effect on the result of the elections.
To be clear, the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” and turned from seeking to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton to developing “a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” as The New York Times had reported.
On Monday, after President Trump’s disastrous performance supporting Putin over America, Ryan issued a statement stating in part: “There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals. The United States must be focused on holding Russia accountable and putting an end to its vile attacks on democracy.”