Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stood in defense of the FBI after recent revelations about a probe into whether President Donald Trump was working on behalf of Russia, calling the action “justified,” Fox News informed.
A New York Times report last week said that the FBI conducted a counterintelligence investigation into the President immediately following the firing of FBI Director James Comey to determine whether or not he was involved in the Russian influence.
Clapper, who is now a CNN commentator, called Trump’s denial “amazing” and “explosive.”
“I certainly can’t recall anything comparable involving a president in over my 50-plus years in intelligence and I was in the intelligence community during Watergate, but nothing happened then that approaches this,” Clapper told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
However, the former DNI doubled down on his previous comments that the FBI would have been “derelict in their duty” if they didn’t launch their counterintelligence investigation into Trump.
“Given the track record, the behavior of then-candidate Trump then President Trump, and then the firing of Jim Comey, and the acknowledgment on television publicly that he did because the investigation of the Russia thing, and it just seems to me that the FBI taking its counterintelligence responsibility seriously would want to look into what’s going on here,” Clapper said. “… So I think the FBI was justified. I’m sure this wasn’t a casual thing done after discussion around the water fountain or coffee break.”
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