The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that the intelligence communities' 2017 assessment that Russia engaged in an unprecedented campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election to help eventual Donald Trump and hurt eventual loser Hillary Clinton was supported by the intelligence.

"The Committee found the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election," was the top-line conclusion. 

That came in a just-released “Review of the Intelligence Community Assessment,” the fourth (of five) installment in the committee's investigation into the intelligence community assessment (ICA). 

President Trump has repeatedly criticized the ICA as a political witch hunt. But the committee, which is chaired by Republican Richard Burr (N.C.), said its investigation affirmed "that analysts were under no political pressure to reach specific conclusions." 

"The ICA reflects strong tradecraft, sound analytical reasoning, and proper justification of disagreement in the one analytical line where it occurred," said Burr. “The Committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community’s conclusions." 

“The ICA summarizing intelligence concerning the 2016 election represented the kind of unbiased and professional work we expect and require from the Intelligence Community," said vice chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.). "The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump," he said, adding: "There is certainly no reason to doubt that the Russians’ success in 2016 is leading them to try again in 2020, and we must not be caught unprepared.”  

The Committee will put off until the final installment discussion of the Steele dossier that included salacious allegations about President Trump, but pointed out that the dossier, though appended to the ICA, was not used to support any of its analytical judgments. 

The Committee review does conclude that the ICA would have benefited from a deeper dive into the role of Russian propaganda, RT's coverage of the Wikileaks' release of information from the DNC for example. 

CNN has had to retract an online story about Russian investment funds and possible connections to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, and three network staffers involved with the story, including the executive editor of an investigative unit, have resigned.

The story was published on CNN's website, but not used on-air, the network said.

CNN's announcement triggered some gleeful tweets and retweets from the president, who for months has been branding CNN as 'fake news' and out to get him.

Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes now that they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories. Ratings way down!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017

pic.twitter.com/6sDcyiW4Kt

— Jeff (@JeffTutorials) June 26, 2017

Exiting the network were the story's author, Thomas Frank; editor Eric Lichtblau; and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, according to CNN Money.

"In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story's publication," CNN said late Monday.

Elsewhere, Project Veritas had posted a video on YouTube purporting to show a CNN Health supervising producer talking about the ratings-driven nature of cable news’ focus on the Russia story. At press time the video had almost 100,000 views (96,044) and was accumulating them at a healthy clip (more than 1,000 new views in less than 30 seconds, for example).

Sen. Charles Grassley signaled that Congress and special counsel to the Justice Department Robert Mueller will be able to operate independently in their investigations of Russian influence on the presidential election and the firing of FBI director James Comey, who had been leading the investigation of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's Russian contacts.

Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a statement to that effect after a closed-door meeting with Mueller, which also included ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

”We had a very productive discussion with Special Counsel Mueller today on our parallel investigations to ensure each can proceed without impeding the other," Grassley said in a statement issued by his office. "We appreciate Special Counsel Mueller’s willingness to meet with us, and both parties have committed to keeping an open dialogue as we proceed.”