begin quote from:
Donald
Trump claimed Thursday that Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper had, in a phone call to him, denounced an unverified …
Politico · 4h
Trump claims Clapper denounced Russia allegations against him
But in his own statement about the conversation, Clapper did no such thing. Instead, he denounced leaks to the media about the private report, and stressed that the intelligence community has not made any judgment on whether the report’s contents were legitimate.
“James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts.Too bad!” Trump wrote in the early hours of Thursday.
In his statement, issued late Wednesday, Clapper effectively confirmed media reports that he and other top U.S. officials shared details of the unsubstantiated private document with Trump during a briefing Friday that focused on suspected Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The private document, included in a larger report about Russia's alleged election-season cyberattacks, contained unsubstantiated claims that the Kremlin has compromising personal information on the president-elect and that Trump’s allies colluded with the Russian government during the presidential campaign.
Clapper expressed “dismay” over how details of the Friday meeting reached the media, calling such leaks “corrosive and damaging” to national security. He insisted, however, that he did not believe people in the intelligence community were behind the leaks. And while he told Trump the intelligence community stands ready to serve him, he did not issue a flat-out apology.
As far as the private report, Clapper said that he “emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product,” and that the “IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable.” His statement further indicated that the intelligence leaders told Trump about the document because they felt it was important he be aware of its existence and potential impact.
Trump, on Twitter at least, stopped short of accepting Clapper’s assurances that the source of that leak was not the intelligence community. Earlier in the week, Trump had blamed the intelligence community for the leaks and likened them to something that might have occurred in Nazi Germany.
The president-elect’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, refused to say Thursday morning whether Trump believed the assurances of the director of national intelligence, who is stepping down once Trump takes office next week.
Asked on NBC’s “Today” show if Clapper’s word was enough to assuage Trump’s concern that the intelligence community was actively conspiring against him, Conway would not say one way or another.
“The president-elect was very happy to receive the call from Mr. Clapper. Very happy that Mr. Clapper agrees with him, Matt, that there should be no leaks,” Conway told NBC anchor Matt Lauer. “I mean, why intelligence officials or other people are leaking to the media, rather than making sure that the president-elect and indeed President Obama himself, are briefed on sensitive information, I think is really the point here.”
Pressed again on whether Trump believed Clapper when he said that the source of the leaks was not the intelligence community, Conway said that “what I believe doesn’t matter.” Conway also insisted that Clapper’s statement was “re-emphasizing that the intelligence community gave no credibility and voracity to the fake news documents,” even though the director of national intelligence stated no such judgment had been made.
When pressed again on where Trump stands, Conway said: “You have to ask him what he believes. But what he believes is that we’re at a very fraught time that we have leaks on sensitive information for political purposes.”
It was a striking statement considering how often Trump, during the 2016 campaign trail, referred to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s emails and other material released by WikiLeaks and through alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other political entities. At one point, Trump urged Russia to track down even more of Clinton’s emails.
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