SCIUTTO: Today, a Senate committee led by a Republican and with a majority of Republican members is breaking with the president, saying not only did Russia meddle in the 2016 election, but that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, specifically wanted Donald Trump to win and to hurt Hillary Clinton. The new bipartisan findings from the Senate Intelligence Committees are in stark contrast to findings from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee siding with the president and said that Putin did not try to help Trump win. Following all of this for us has been CNN political correspondent Sara Murray. So, Sara, walk us through these findings, which were really, you know, quite strongly worded. There was not a lot of -- there was no wishy washy in this. It was very direct.</s>SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right. And, remember, Jim, the intelligence community wasn't very wishy washy on this when they put out their report in January of 2017. And what we see from this Senate report is they're concurring. They're saying that, yes, Russia did meddle in the 2016 election and their preference was Donald Trump. They did it to try to benefit Trump. But the Senate committee also concludes they did this to try to hurt Hillary Clinton as well. And this was not something that was a one-off effort. This was something that was done under the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now, as the Senate was looking at how the intelligence community came to this assessment in January 2017, they decided that the intelligence community reached these conclusions in a professional and transparent manner. They said there didn't seem to be any political pressure for them to reach these conclusions. That when they disagreed about an issue, there was a debate about it and it was transparent. So essentially they're saying, all these conclusions we saw from the intelligence community in 2017 that the president has doubted, they were sound.</s>SCIUTTO: So Senate Intel investigation, of course, one of many intelligence agencies that made their own confident assessments. And, in fact, over time have said that Russia's interference has been even greater than they initially realized.
Senate Panel on Russian Interference.