House Intelligence Committee Republicans have completed a draft report in their year-long Russia probe.
It states they found no evidence US President Donald Trump or anyone affiliated with him colluded with Russian officials to affect the outcome of the 2016 election - a conclusion expected to incite backlash from Democrats.
Republicans also determined that while the Russian Government did pursue "active measures" to interfere in the election, it did not do so with the intention of helping Trump's campaign, contradicting the US intelligence community's findings.
"We've found no evidence of collusion," Congressman Michael Conaway, (R), who oversees the Russia probe, said. He noted that the worst they had uncovered was "perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment at taking meetings" - such as a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower, which Conaway said "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."