President Barack Obama’s former spy chief acknowledged that he never saw evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.
During a Thursday interview on CNN’s New Day, James Clapper, who was the director of national intelligence for most of Obama’s presidency, told network host John Berman that he never saw any evidence of collusion between the two groups.
“No, I did not. Of course, collusion is not a formally defined term, certainly in a legal sense,” he said. “If you read the intelligence community assessment, particularly the highly classified version and as well as the unclassified version, you won’t find the ‘c-word’ anywhere in that report.”
While Clapper said he “had no evidence of such collusion” in early 2017, he took a different tone while being interviewed by CNN’s Brianna Keilar last year. At the time, he said he was disturbed by the activities of Russia in its attempts to interfere with the 2016 election, adding that he believed the Trump campaign was “essentially aiding and abetting the Russians.”
The terms “aid” and “abet,” in the case of enabling agents of a foreign power such as Russia, fall within the U.S. criminal code and potentially can lead to severe criminal penalties.
Last Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee released thousands of pages of transcripts from its closed-off interviews from 2017 to 2018 regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. The released documents also showed Clapper admitting to the congressional committee that there was no direct evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign entity to influence the election.
“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election,” Clapper said. “That’s not to say that there weren’t concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. … But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence of the content of these meetings. It’s just the frequency and prevalence of them was of concern.”
In April 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller released his long-awaited report on Russian interference and could not find evidence of criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, though it did find substantial evidence that Russian actors actively attempted to influence the election. U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr, is currently examining the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
