Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Tuesday morning he never saw any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
But Clapper went on to note that while he wasn’t aware of any collusion, it may have existed.
“I didn’t see any evidence of it before I left [the Office of the Director of National Intelligence],” Clapper said in an interview on CNN’s “New Day.”
“To say that my statement was a flat denial of collusion, that’s not correct,” he continued. “The correct statement is I wasn’t aware of that — that’s not to say there might not have been or that there wasn’t evidence of it, but I couldn’t say that at the time I left the government on the 20th of January.”
While he wouldn’t go so far as to say he saw evidence of collusion, Clapper did say Moscow’s “aggressiveness” during the last election was “unprecedented.”
“Never ever has there been a case of the aggressiveness and the direct action the Russians took in their conduct of a multifaceted campaign to interfere in our election,” he said. “The aggressiveness in this campaign was unprecedented.”
“If there’s ever been a clarion call for vigilance, this is it,” he continued.
The FBI and multiple congressional committees have been looking into ties between President Trump’s campaign associates and Russia.
Questions surrounding the links between Trump associates and Moscow have only heightened in recent weeks, after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, a move Democrats charge was meant to distract from the FBI’s investigation.
