Whitewash, anyone?

House Intelligence Committee Republicans say they have found no evidence that President Trump and his affiliates colluded with Russian officials to sway the 2016 election or that the Kremlin sought to help him, a conclusion at odds with Democrats’ takeaways from the congressional panel’s year-long probe and the apparent trajectory of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

The findings are part of a 150-page draft report that Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who oversees the committee’s Russia probe, announced on Monday. It will probably be weeks before the document is made public.

“We’ve found no evidence of collusion,” Conaway told reporters Monday. He noted that the worst the panel uncovered was “perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment at taking meetings” — such as a June 2016 gathering at Trump Tower in New York City between members of the Trump campaign and a ­Russian lawyer. Conaway said that meeting “shouldn’t have happened, no doubt about that.”

“But only Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or someone else like that could take this series of inadvertent contacts with each other, meetings, whatever, and weave that into some sort of a fiction, page-turner spy thriller,” Conaway said. “We’re not dealing in fiction, we’re dealing in facts, and we found no evidence of any collusion.”

House Intelligence Committee Republicans completed the draft report without any input from Democrats, who will be able to see and weigh in on the document starting Tuesday, Conaway said. In a statement Monday night, the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), said the sight-unseen report was a “tragic milestone” and a “capitulation to the executive branch.”

What, you were expecting anything more from them?  They’re ignoring what the intelligence community has been saying all along: Putin wanted Trump in office.

What Charlie Pierce said:

Of course, in fairness, we should wait for the actual report, and do our best to ignore the symphony of triumphant crowing from the usual suspects in the media. (Sean Hannity has set the Orgasmatron to infinity and climbed inside.) But we already know enough to know that the purpose of the Republican majority on this committee was to act as a White House alibi factory.

And the idea that this announcement, by which we learn what the report will conclude without being told when the report actually will be released, is in any way coincidental in the context of everything else that’s swirling around the administration* is to ignore how Monday’s action is totally of a piece with the strategy employed by the Republican majority of the committee from the day the gavel first fell.

And, I suspect, the lights are still on in the Office of the Special Counsel, as Robert Mueller hears the news from across the room, and asks one of his lawyers to pass him another file.

The shoes haven’t even begun to drop.