Donald Trump Jr.'s reported meeting with a Russian lawyer is generating a lot of "hyperventilation," but ongoing intelligence community probes haven't shown any "collusion" between Moscow and the Trump campaign, former Rep. Pete Hoekstra told Newsmax TV Monday.
In an interview with Newsmax TV's J.D. Hayworth, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and author of "Architects of Disaster," said Russian meddling in the 2016 election had no "meaningful impact" on the outcome.
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"All the votes were tabulated and counted fairly," he said. "This was an ongoing investigation by the intelligence community, by the FBI. They've never shown any collusion and having a meeting with a Russian lawyer who might have some information and then goes and moves on to talk about adoption and was there for 20 minutes.
"I don't know where this generates all the kind of anxiety and hype that it makes it to a Sunday morning TV show."
Nevertheless, Hoekstra said, "it is clear the Russians are very interested in our political process."
"If they can influence it one way or another they will," he said. "The Russians. The Chinese. They have their tentacles throughout America either to steal intelligence, to influence people and these types of things. We've got to be careful and we've got to acknowledge it and we've got to monitor it and we've got to stop it wherever we can."
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