In the transcript and the video below, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, speaks to CNN’s Jim Sciutto and makes the stunning admission that he’d been following Obama’s orders – and he says it twice.
This is very big news because it’s the first time a member of the deep state has admitted that President Obama was not only aware of the investigation, but was issuing orders to his team. “What were we supposed to have done…blown off what the then commander-in-chief, President Obama, told us to do?” And, as if we missed it the first time, he says it again. “It’s kind of disconcerting now to be investigated for, you know having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the president.”
Jim Sciutto: As you know, the President has members of this government, you have the Attorney General traveling the world now meeting with U.S. intelligence partners trying to find out, in his view, whether they participated in some sort of Obama administration led effort to undermine President Trump in the last election here. You also know that John Durham who is a prosecutor here, a senior justice department official, he’s pursuing his own investigations on the origins of that probe. Are you concerned that Barr’s or Durham’s investigation will find wrongdoing and seek to punish former intelligence officials?
James Clapper: Well, I uh, I don’t know. I, I, I don’t think there was any wrongdoing. I think at the time all of us were trying to navigate a very, very difficult, politically fraught, highly charged situation. I know, for my part, my main concern was the Russians, and the threat posed by the Russians to our very political fabric. The message I’m getting from all this is, apparently what we were supposed to have done was to ignore the Russian interference, ignore the Russian meddling and the threat that it poses to us, and oh, by the way, blown off what the then commander-in-chief, President Obama, told us to do, which was to assemble all the reporting that we could that we had available to us — and put it in one report that the president could pass on to the Congress and to the next administration. And while we’re at it, declassify as much as we possibly could to make it public, and that’s what we did.
Jim Sciutto: One issue I’m — (crosstalk)
James Clapper: It’s kind of disconcerting now to be investigated for, you know having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the president.
