A voluminous report released by a Republican-controlled Senate panel Tuesday confirms what special counsel Robert Mueller's report had already established — that Russia set out in 2016 to help Donald Trump win the presidency, and that Trump's campaign actively courted that assistance. The Senate Intelligence Committee's Republican majority gave its blessing to this report, meaning the president cannot level his usual claims of a partisan witch hunt.

While the report doesn't establish direct collusion between Trump himself and Russia, it is damning enough that it should prompt Republican moderates, at least, to question the judgment and patriotism of the person they helped put into office. Trump cannot be trusted with another four years.

Even before the release of this report, the established facts surrounding the Trump campaign's dalliances with Vladimir Putin's government were shocking. Trump publicly goaded Russia to hack the email system of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and Kremlin hackers did so that very day. Top campaign officials met in Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected lawyer offering dirt on Clinton. Candidate Trump himself later helped concoct a lie to tell the public about the purpose of the meeting. None of this is in dispute.

The final, nearly 1,000-page Intelligence Committee report adds disturbing new details. It found that then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — who was later convicted on bank fraud and other charges — "represented a grave counterintelligence threat" because he was working closely with a Russian intelligence officer. This, the report found, "created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign."

The report also questioned Trump's claim in written answers to Mueller's investigation that he had "no recollection" of speaking to his crony, Roger Stone, about Wikileaks disclosures regarding Democratic emails. "Despite Trump's recollection, the Committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stone's access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions," the report says. Trump has since commuted Stone's prison sentence for lying to investigators.

The report didn't find proof that Trump directly conspired with Putin's government. Republicans on the committee have grasped at that straw to suggest the report is somehow exonerating. That's only true if your standard of acceptable presidential behavior rises no higher than avoiding provable criminality while engaging in potentially treasonous acts. That's fine for mobsters, but we should expect more of presidents.

When a president welcomes election interference from a geopolitical foe — and then spends his term publicly supporting that foe even over the assessments of U.S. intelligence — it hardly matters whether there's a smoking gun or just a warm one. Republicans once prioritized national security. The party's rank-and-file voters should prioritize it again, and remove this national security threat from office.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Photo credit: Pexels at Pixabay