determination in the face of the Senate Intelligence Committee's much different conclusion.

The lead GOP investigator revealed that one of the several criminal referrals he sent to the Justice Department last year, which were related to the Trump-Russia investigation, had to do with the intelligence community assessment. He said it focuses on "whether or not intelligence was manipulated for political purposes."

Nunes's assertions run counter to what the Senate intelligence panel wrote in its report. The heavily redacted report said Senate investigators found no evidence of political pressure to reach a specific conclusion and determined the assessment by the CIA, FBI, and NSA “presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

The intelligence community report released in January 2017assessed with "moderate" to "high" confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin sought to boost then-candidate Donald Trump's 2016 election chances.

The House Intelligence Committee report, released in 2018, was not bipartisan. The GOP-led effort concluded, “The majority of the Intelligence Community Assessment judgments on Russia's election activities employed proper analytic tradecraft," but found the "judgments on Putin's strategic intentions did not.” The Democrats on the panel released their own assessment that said they found "no evidence" to cast doubt on the assessment.

Nunes sent a notification about eight criminal referrals targeting individuals tied to the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, including some that had to do with leaks, in April 2019. The exact content of those referrals has never been publicly disclosed. Nunes said at the time