Laura Ingraham Rips James Clapper "He Sounds Like A Bumbling Idiot" On The View
was the truck campaign it was comprised of private citizens surveilled by the
Obama administration was information collected and then retained about them
these are questions that should frighten every American no matter what your
political affiliation was the government spying on its citizens well we know for
certain that Carter Page who was on this program earlier this week was targeted
and surveilled by the FBI he was approached by an FBI informant who was
reportedly sent out to make contact with Paige and other Trump campaign aides the
big question is did President Obama or high-ranking White House officials know
of an authorized spying on a political opponent mainly Trump and his campaign
staff well this is certainly not the first time the government has surveilled
citizens or captured information on them I want to take you back to a hearing
from 2013 when Senator Ron Wyden posed this question to then Director of
National Intelligence James clapper what I wanted to see is if you could give me
a yes or no answer to the question does the NSA collect any type of data at all
on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans no sir it does not not
wittingly yesterday clapper appeared on the view where he tried to defend
himself against Trump's charges that he's basically just a liar the
president's calling me a lying machine well okay that stems from is an exchange
I had with Senator Wyden five years ago in March of 2013 about a surveillance
program and he was asking me about one and I was thinking about another so I
made a mistake but I didn't lie so that's what occasioned uh yeah okay the
line well even Megan McCain could see through clappers obfuscation what you're
referencing though is that when you said when you're talking about James
Nodin blowing the whistle on the NSA illegally spying and in 2013 when you
were asked about it you said no so that that is a lie and I'm sorry I was
thinking about something else it's a lie and it is amazing to me that clapper
continues to go on national TV again and shamelessly with a straight face denies
what we already know to be true information leaked by Edward Snowden
national security contractor completely contradicts clappers claims the question
from Wyden was simple and clear and wide himself is called out clapper for all
this repeatedly but I think the most damning moment of clapper is view
appearance was this one was the FBI spying on Trump's campaign no they were
not they were spying on a term I don't particularly like but on what the
Russians were doing trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating trying to
gain access trying to gain leverage does this spying wait wait wait a sec if he
doesn't like the term he's the man who oversaw massive surveillance and
intelligence he has a problem with the term spying are you kidding me but the
laughing really makes it very believable none of this was lost on the president
who today tweeted Spygate could be one of the biggest political scandals in
history then he doubled down I mean if you look at clapper he sort of admitted
that they had spies in the campaign yesterday inadvertently but I hope it's
not true but it looks like it is we now call it spy gate you're calling it spy
gate a lot of bad things have happened well bad things mr. president have been
happening for some time now remember when clapper and Sally Yates were
confronted by Senator Chuck Grassley about the unmasking of trump officials
they were surveilled remember at Trump Tower mr. clapper initiates did either
of you ever requests the unmasking of mr. Trump his associates or any member
of Congress
yes in one case I did it either of you ever reviewed classified documents in
which mr. Trump his associates or members of Congress had been on masked
oh yes you have can you give us details here and there's no I can't miss shades
have you yes I have and no I can't give you details there is a little doubt in
my mind that we have witnessed an outrageous abuse of our Intel and
law-enforcement agencies not because Brennan or Comey or clapper were
convinced that Russia was rigging the election but because they wanted to
hobble a much bigger threat Donald Trump the Obama crowd was so brazen and so
confident that they were doing the right thing I think in the end they were
actually really sloppy at least seven trumpets oh she 'its are suspected of
being surveilled Steve Bannon Michael Cohen Lieutenant General Michael Flynn
son-in-law Jared Kushner Paul Manafort Carter Paige and George papadopolis we
also know that at least four top Obama officials regularly requested that the
names of Americans be unmasked for Samantha power this was reportedly a
near-daily undertaking during the 2016 campaign that year 2016 now here's why
all this deep state intrigue matters the Obama team had a material interest in
spiking the Hillary Clinton email probe in making way for the Trump Russia
investigation their careers and their legacies hung in the balance as Andy
McCarthy of National Review rightly points out in a column today had Hillary
won the election many of these officials would have retained their jobs and would
have been able to cover whatever schemes they ran during the Obama tenure they
simply could not permit Trump to take the presidency and once he was within
striking distance I think they got really desperate desperate to wrap up
that Hillary probe so maybe she could you know
take the white house like they always thought and desperate to collect dirt on
Trump to destroy any chance of that candidacy it is a rich irony that the
very people who claim that they wanted to stop Russian interference in our
elections adopted the tactics of a totalitarian state like Russia to stifle
political opponents and to subvert the election of Donald Trump given all of
that it made me howl when Chuck Schumer said this yesterday president's behavior
is the kind of grossly autocratic behavior we'd expect in a banana
republic not a mature democracy republic is a place where citizens particularly
political opponents are spied upon falsely charged and unjustly imprisoned
what Trump is attempting to do is to expose the corruption in our Intel and
law enforcement services which Congress and the president must exercise exercise
their oversight over in the wake of 9/11 conservatives were willing to trade our
privacy for security we're now being photographed by the government how many
times a day can't even count our money and our persons are tracked at home and
abroad well we the people and our elected officials should not be
endlessly trailed and treated like dangers to the state and we certainly
should not be spied upon for political reasons the ever-expanding surveillance
state is a threat to our freedom and some within these agencies think they
are omnipotent and above the law they are not this is a president who
will not be controlled and who will not be manipulated and he's insisting on
full transparency that's a novel concept that the deep state better get used to
and that's the angle
the Director of National Intelligence James clapper oversaw 16 agencies
including the CIA NSA and the FBI so he's really the perfect guy to help make
some sense out of the White House war on the intelligence community please
welcome author of the new book facts and fears James clapper
the new rise seems to have been at war with the intelligence community since
he's taken office now whether he's trying to undermine the rush
investigation of threatening the fire robert muller or demanding
investigations into you know whether somebody has been in his group
investigate I mean it's is this is this having like a bad effect on the country
well done yeah it doesn't help in my view I think we got off to a bad start
in January of 17 when we went up to Trump Tower undoubtedly my last ever
sojourned at Trump Tower and briefed him on the intelligence community assessment
about the Russian interference and I think his reaction then it's still the
same today is just can't accept anything that would cast doubt on the legitimacy
of his election and certainly the Russian meddling had that impact and so
the IntelliJ IDEA is a source of that you know we be characterized as Nazis
for you know having leaked the dossier which we didn't do but anyway which I
called him about just to protect I felt I had to say something for the men and
women that toil in the trenches of intelligence everyday trying to make
this country safe and so that is continued to this day and I think you
know with the informant business well the point here is Russians know not
spying on the campaign but what are the Russians doing in a sense
unfortunately what they were trying to do is protect our political system and
protect the campaign but the the FBI started to look into Trump's ties to
Russia in the summer of 2016 a Trump tweeted that this spring
despite rather the spine that he claims is spying other people say it's a
whistleblower or an informant he says it's spying is bigger than Watergate so
I asked you was the FBI spying on Trump's campaign I know what he they
were not they were spying on a term I don't particularly like but on what the
Russians were doing trying to understand where the Russians infiltrating trying
to gain access trying to gain leverage and influence so what they do
so why doesn't he like that he should be happy
they should be right I mean Russia and this is one of the reasons I wrote my
book was the threat that Russia poses because they are bent on undermining our
system and that's what they did and had a lot of success during the course of
the election you know I don't like the term spy either I was with the
Department of Justice's in AUSA and I think surveil is perhaps the more
important word what about this notion that there was a CI a confidential
informant embedded in the campaign is that true well as we've seen
unfortunately the the identity of this informant is now out in the media and if
you know this is a fairly benign tool available to the FBI given all of the
other capabilities available to them and and what has been described that he did
was was was was pretty mild the FBI but particularly draws on uses informants
all the time for law enforcement purposes and it's a very valuable source
of information the FBI has very strict rules and protocols on the on their
usage and what's bad about this is revelations about this about this
individual so other informants for the FBI who provide valuable information
that keep that keep this nation safe and secure begin to wonder well as my
identity going to be protected and what about potential informants who might
want to help with the FBI and what's the impact on them is pretty chilling you
know the president tweeted about you quote clapper is a lying machine who now
works for fake news so a lot of people I know first of all what was your reaction
to that when you first saw that well the president's calling me a lying machine
well okay what that stems from is an exchange I
had with senator Wyden five years ago in March of 2013 about a surveillance
program and he was asking me about one and I was thinking about another so I
made a mistake but I didn't lie so that's what occasion though what you're
referencing though is that when you said when you're talking about James Snowden
blowing the whistle on the NSA illegally spying and in 2013 when you were asked
about it you said no so that that is a lie and I I'm sorry I was thinking about
something else another program I can get at all the technical details about he
was asking about the metadata program and the euphemistic way asked about it
I didn't break the code well I was thinking of another program that we just
gotten renewed section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
and by the way had I been on the same page with him and understood what he was
asking me I'd have still been in a bad place because at the time that program
was classified and and just on the face of it I you know I've been trotting up
the hill testifying for 20 or 25 years dozens of hearings hundreds of questions
and always tried to answer them straight but gee just for a change of pace I
think a lie on this one question and by the way do it on live television in
front of one of my oversight committees really
average of nine times a day now according to the there is a distrust
that what's fascinating right now is there's such a distrust between the
American public and our intelligence agencies and there's a lot of leaking
James Comey leaking his memos Andrew McCabe leaking to the media about the
Clinton investigation so I know people in my own life who have this distrust
which is unique to this moment in time is there any ownership to be taken from
the intelligence agencies right now don't listen I'll tell you the major
takeaway from Edward Snowden I and I have a whole chapter on in my book about
that particularly from the government's point of view and the profound damage he
has done and if you're paying taxes in this country today and for some years
you're gonna be paying to repair the damage he did to her and our foreign
intelligence capabilities if what do you it's exposed was only about so-called
domestic surveillance I could understand it but he exposed a lot more just the
nature of intelligence work which is secret it has to be particularly protect
sources and methods so that automatically by definition raises
suspicions in the minds of a lot of people understand that one of the
lessons I learned in which I tried to try to work out after Snowden was we
need to be more transparent to try to explain what we do why we do it and
importantly all the oversight mechanisms that exist to make sure that what we do
is legal ethical and moral but inherently intelligence it's not like
the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Commerce which is open
transparent no secrets well the inherently our work is that place is a
huge burden on our intelligence oversight committees one of which right
now is kind of broken to perform that oversight on behalf of everyone in this
room and on behalf of all American citizens to ensure that we are doing
we're doing the right thing I have a question for you real quickly we live
kind of in a dangerous time we're depending on which side of an issue
you're coming at you think of people as either whistleblowers or leakers exactly
so when we talk about the steel dossier for example which was an unsubstantiated
document with salacious claims about trauma James Comey briefed the President
on that dossier and then it was it got out to the media you have said that you
did not leak that do you have theories on this and is that okay because where
we fall we might see this as good because it was a whistleblower or bad
because it was a leak well first of all the dossier is not it's not classified
not intelligent talk about so there's nothing secret about it a point I need
two points I need to make one that we did not use it as a source for our
intelligence community assessment we felt I felt in the no good deed goes
unpunished Department that the president-elect at least needed to know
it was out there and that was the whole point of the briefing at one point Jim
and I were both going to do it and at the last moment yet they call me and at
the last moment he said I think it'd be better if I do it alone of course I was
fine with that and so he he stayed after the the broader briefing to telling that
so that the point was to warn him and we didn't draw on it for our official
assessment and because we couldn't validate the second third orders assets
or collection sources informants that were used in that in the dossier so the
dossier is not necessarily a leak no I mean I might leak in the newspaper to
not in my mind well I don't know how I feel about no James clapper is sticking
around and we'll be right back thank you god bless you and God bless america
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