Sally Yates Testifies About Michael Flynn, Russia and President Trump (Full) | The New York TImes

but here we come to order thank you all for coming here's sort of the order of the day I'll give a brief opening statement alone with Senator Whitehouse then we'll have senator Grassley and Feinstein follow us in questioning and be seven minute rounds initially and we'll try to do a second round of five minutes to both of the witnesses thank you for coming try to make this as reasonably short as possible and if you need a break please let us know so people under what are we doing and what are we trying to accomplish in January the intelligence community unanimously said that the Russians through their intelligence services tried to interfere in the 2016 American presidential election that it was the Russians who hacked Podesta's emails it was the Russians who broke into the Democratic National Committee and was Russians who helped empower WikiLeaks no evidence that the Russians change voting tallies how people were influenced by what happened only they know and God knows but I think every American should be concerned about what the Russians did from my point of view there's no doubt in my mind it was the Russians involved in all the things I just described not some 400-pound guy sitting on her bed or any other country Russia is up to no good when it comes to democracies all over the world dismembering the Ukraine the Baltics are always under siege by Russian interference so why we want to learn what the Russians did we want to find a way to stop them because they're apparently not going to stop until somebody makes them the hearing that was held last week with director Comey asked a question is it fair to say the Russian government still involved in American politics and he said yes so I want House members and Senators to know is the presidential campaign in 2016 it could be our campaigns next I don't know what happened in France but somebody hacked into mr. mcrawlins account and we'll see who that may have been but this is sort of what Russia does to try to undermine democracy so what are we trying to accomplish here to validate the findings of the Intelligence Committee as much as possible and to come up with a course of action as a nation bipartisan in nature because it was the democratic party of 2016 where the victims could be the Republican party of the future when one parties attacked all of us should feel an attack it should be an article v agreement between both major parties all major parties that when a foreign power interferes in our election doesn't matter who they targeted and we're all in the same boat secondly the unmasking the 702 program quite frankly when I got involved in this investigation I didn't know much about it director Comey said the 702 program which allows warrants for intelligence gathering and vital intelligence tool I learned a bit about unmasking and what I've learned is disturbing so I don't know exactly all the details what goes into unmasking a an American citizen being incidentally surveilled when they are involved with a foreign agent I'd like to know more and I want to make sure that that unmasking can never be used as a political weapon in our democracy so I'm all for hitting the enemy before they hit us intelligence gatherings of Central but I do believe we need to take a look at the procedures involved in 702 particularly how unmasking is requested who can request it and what can what what limitations exist if any on how the information can be used so that's why we're here we're here to find out all things Russia and the witnesses are determined by the evidence and nothing else and the 702 area reauthorization will come for the Congress fairly soon and I for one have a lot of questions I didn't have before I've enjoyed doing this with senator Whitehouse senator finds Feinstein and Grassley have been terrific let it be said that the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee have allowed us to do our job have empowered us and have been hands on and it's much appreciated with that I would recognize senator Whitehouse Thank You chairman graham for the important work the subcommittee is doing under your leadership investigating the threat of russian interfering in our elections in January America's intelligence community disclosed that the Russian government on the orders of Latta Mir Putin engaged in an election influence campaign throughout 2016 in March FBI director Comey confirmed that and I quote him here the FBI as part of its counterintelligence mission is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with a trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts the FBI and the intelligence community's work is appropriately taking place outside the public eye our inquiry serves broader aims to give a thorough public accounting of the known facts to pose the questions that still need answers and help us determine how best to protect the integrity and proper functioning of our government at the subcommittee's first hearing on March 15th we heard from expert witnesses about the Russian toolbox for interfering in the politics of other countries now we can ask which of these tools were used against us by the Russians in 2016 here's a checklist propaganda fake news trolls and BOTS as Clint Watts told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in March russian state-sponsored media outlets RT and Sputnik in the lead-up to the election quote turned out manipulated truths false news stories and conspiracies and quote providing a weaponized fake news effort openly supporting Donald Trump's candidacy quoting again while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton this was to again quote Watts a deliberate well organized well resourced well-funded wide-ranging effort and quote by Russia using trolls and BOTS to amplify its messages particularly across social media these facts are not disputed by any serious person so this is a yes on the checklist hacking and theft of political information throughout 2015 and 2016 Russian intelligence services and state-sponsored hackers conducted cyber operations against u.s. political targets including state and local election boards penetrating networks probing for vulnerabilities and stealing private information and emails attribution of these crimes to Russian actors was confirmed in our last hearing and by many other sources so this is another yes timed leaks of damaging material Russian intelligence fronts cut outs and sympathetic organizations like Gooch 42.0 DC leaks comm and WikiLeaks then time the release of stolen victim data to maximize its political effect manipulate public opinion and thereby influence the outcome of an election longtime trump associate Roger stone admits to having interacted with Gooch 42.0 and he foreshadowed releases of stolen data on Twitter in August and October 2016 timing can matter on October 7th just hours after the damaging Access Hollywood tapes of donald trump were made public WikiLeaks began publishing emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta so yes again assassination and political violence last October Russian military intelligence reportedly conspired to assassinate the then prime minister of Montenegro as part of a coup attempt in 2004 former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko was disfigured when he was poisoned in a suspected assassination attempt by Russian agents Russian opposition figures are routinely the targets of state-directed political violence vladimir Karamoja has survived two recent poisonings while boris nemtsov was brazenly murdered near the kremlin in 2015 thankfully we have no evidence of that happening here investment control and key economic sectors we learned from heather Connolly's testimony in our last hearing that the kremlin playbook is to manipulate other countries through economic penetration heavily investing in critical sectors of the target country's economy to create political leverage putin's petro politics uses Russia's control of natural gas to create political pressure but know as to that tactic here so far shady business and financial ties Russia exploits the dark shadows of economic and political systems FBI director Comey testified last week that the United States is becoming the last big haven for shell corporations where the opacity of the corporate form allows the concealment of criminal funds and can allow foreign money to directly and indirectly influence our political system since the Citizens United decision we've seen unprecedented dark money flow in our elections from 501 C 4 organizations we don't know who's behind that dark money or what they're demanding in return using shell corporations and other devices Russia establishes illicit financial relationships to develop leverage against prominent figures through the carrot of continued bribery or the stick of threatened disclosure how about here well we know that President Trump has long pursued business deals in Russia he's reported to have done or sought to do business there since the mid-1990s as he chased deals in Russia throughout the 2000s he deputized a colorful character named Felix Seder to develop real estate projects there under the Trump name Saders family has links to Russian organized crime and Felix himself has had difficulties with the law Sator said in a 2008 deposition that he would pitch business ideas directly to Trump and his team on a constant basis as recently as 2010 Sator had a Trump Organization business card in an office in Trump Tower Donald Trump jr. said in September 2008 that he'd made half a dozen trips to Russia in the preceding 18 months noting that Russian investors were heavily involved in Trump's New York real estate projects we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia he said one Trump property in midtown Manhattan had become within a few years of opening a prominent depository of Russian money according to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek so here there are still big questions of course President Trump could clarify these questions by releasing his business and personal tax returns corrupting and compromising politicians in testimony before the Judiciary Committee last Wednesday director Comey acknowledged that financial leverage has been exploited by Russian intelligence over many decades back to the days of days of Joseph Alsop they use compliment or compromising material sure and manipulate targeted individuals with the prospect of damaging disclosures has Russia compromised corrupted cultivated or exerted improper influence on individuals associated with president Trump his administration his transition team his campaign or his businesses another big question mark we know that President Trump has had in his orbit a number of very Russia friendly figures in August 2015 Trump first met informally with Michael Flynn who was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency had developed strong professional relationships with Russian military intelligence in December of that year Flynn travelled to Moscow for a paid speaking appearance at an anniversary gala for RT where he was briefly seated next to Vladimir Putin quite a seat for a retired American general two months after that trip Flynn was reportedly serving as an informal national security adviser to Trump Trump identified a little-known energy investor named Carter Page as one of his foreign policy advisers in late March 2016 Page told Bloomberg politics that friends and associates had been hurt by US sanctions against Russia and that there's a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a better situation end quote on April 27 2016 Trump and several of his advisers including Jeff Sessions met Sergey keys lyac Russia's ambassador to the United States before a campaign speech the speech which was hosted by the center for the national interest had been arranged by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner kiss alayich attended the Trump Republican convention and he told The Washington Post that he had multiple contacts with the Trump campaign both before and after the election in the days after the November election Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister confirmed that his government had communicated with the Trump team during the campaign and we know Michael Flynn spoke with Ambassador kis Lea on December 29th the same day President Obama announced punitive sanctions against Russia for its interference in the 2016 election Trump transition and administration officials thereafter made false statements to the media and the public about the content of Flynn's conversations with kis lyac apparently as a result of Flynn having misled them this of eventually led President Trump to ask for Flynn's resignation something I'm hoping miss Yates can shed some light on in her testimony today the president and his administration have yet to take responsibility for or explain these and other troubling Russia links dismissing facts as fake news and downplaying the significance of individuals involved more than a hundred days into the Trump administration and newly nearly two years since he declared his candidacy for president only one person has been held accountable for improper contacts with Russia Michael Flynn even then the Trump administration has maintained that Flynn's communications with the Ambassador were not in fact improper he simply lost the confidence of the president we need a more thorough accounting of the facts many years ago an 18-minute gap transfixed the country and got everybody's attention in another investigation in this case we have an 18-day gap between the notification of the White House that a senior official had potentially been compromised and action taken against that senior officials role at best the Trump administration has displayed serious errors of judgment at worst these irregularities may reflect efforts that compromise or corruption at the hands of Russian intelligence my sincere hope is that this hearing and those to come will help us find out Thank You chairman our two witnesses now are well known and I will be sworn in but mr. clapper the former Director of National Intelligence has served this country for decades in uniform and out and dedicated his life to intelligence gathering and we appreciate that miss Shay's was the former Deputy Attorney General is well respected by people in the legal profession thank you both for coming if you'll please rocks raise your hand please you affirmed that testimony about to give the subcommittee is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god mr. clapper German Graham ranking member white house and members of subcommittee certainly didn't expect to be before this committee or any other committee to Congress again so soon since I thought I was all done with this when I left the government and this is only my first two hearings this week but understandably concerned about the egregious Russian interference in our election process is so critically serious as to merit focus hopefully bipartisan focus by the Congress and the American people last year the intelligence community conducted an exhaustive review of Russian interference into our presidential election process resulting in a special intelligence community assessment or ICA as we call it I'm here today to provide whatever information I can now as a private citizen on how the intelligence community conducted its analysis came up with its findings and communicated them to the Obama administration to the Trump transition team to the Congress and an unclassified forum to the American public additionally I'll briefly address four related topics that have emerged since the ICA was produced because of both classification and some executive privilege structures requested by the White House there are limits to what I can discuss and of course my direct official knowledge of any of this stopped on 20 January when my term of office was happily over as you know the ICA was a coordinated product from three agencies CIA NSA and the FBI not all 17 components the intelligence community those three under the aegis of my former office following extensive intelligence reporting about many Russian efforts to collect on and influence the outcome of the presidential election President Obama asked us to do this in early December and have it completed before the end of his term the two dozen or so analysts for this task were hand-picked seasoned experts from each of the contributing agencies they were given complete unfettered mutual access to all sensitive raw intelligence data and importantly complete independence to reach their findings they found that the russian government pursued a multi-faceted influencer campaign in the run-up to the election including aggressive use of cyber capabilities the russians used cyber operations against both political parties including hacking into servers used by the Democratic National Committee and releasing stolen data to WikiLeaks and other media outlets Russia also collected on certain Republican party affiliated targets but did not release any Republican related data the ATO's community assessment concluded first that President Putin directed an influence campaign to erode the faith and confidence the American people in our presidential election process second that he did so to demean Secretary Clinton and third that he sought to advantage mr. Trump these conclusions were reached based on the richness of the information gathered and analyzed and were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me these Russian activities and the resulting assessment were brief first to President Obama on the 5th of January then to president-elect Trump at Trump Tower on the 6th and to the Congress via a series of five briefings from the sixth through the 13th of January the classified version was profusely annotated with footnotes drawn from thousands of pages of supporting material the key judgments in the unclassified version published on the 6th of January were identical to the classified version well it's been over four months since the issuance of this assessment as directors Comey and Rogers testified before the House Intelligence Committee on the 20th of March the conclusions and confidence levels reached at the time still stand I think that's a statement to the quality and professional of the ice of the intelligence community people who produce such a compelling intelligence report during a tumultuous convert controversial time under intense scrutiny and with a very tight deadline throughout the public dialogue about the issue of the past few months for related topics have been raised that could use some clarification I'd like to take a few moments to provide attempt to provide that clarification first I want to address the meaning of quote unmasking which is an unofficial term that's appeared frequently in the media in recent months as often I think misused and misunderstood so what frequently happens that in the course of conducting lawfully authorized electronic surveillance on validated foreign intelligence targets the collecting agency picks up communications involving US persons either their direct interface with a validated foreign intelligence target or where there is discussion about those u.s. persons by validated foreign intelligence targets under intelligence community minimization procedures the identities of these US persons are typically masked and reports that go out to intelligence consumers and they're referred to each report at a time as US person one u.s. person two etc however there are cases when to fully understand the context of the communication that has been obtained or the threat that is posed the consumer of that collected intelligence may ask the identity of the u.s. person be revealed such requests explain why the unmasking is necessary and that explanation is conveyed back to the agency that collected the information it is then up to that agency whether to approve the request and to provide the identity and if US personal identity is revealed that identity is provided only to the person who properly requested it not to a broader audience this process is subject to oversight and reporting and in the interest of transparency my former office publishes a report on the statistics of how many US persons identities are on mass based on a collection that occurred under section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act which I'll speak to in a moment and in 2016 that number was 1934 on several occasions during my six and a half years of DNI I requested the identity of US persons to be revealed in each such I made these requests so I could fully understand the context of the communication and a potential threat being posed at no time did I ever submit a request for personal or political purposes or to voyeuristically look at raw intelligence nor am i aware of any instance of such abuse by anyone else second is the issue of leaks leaks have been completed with unmasking x' in some of the public discourse but they are two very different things an unmasking is a legitimate process that consists of a request and approval by proper authorities as I've just briefly described a leak is an unauthorized disclosure of classified or sensitive information that is improper under any circumstance I've long maintained during my 50 plus year career in intelligence that leaks endanger national security they compromised sources methods and tradecraft and they can put assets lives at risk and for the record in my long career I've never knowingly exposed classified information in an inappropriate manner third is the issue of counterintelligence of vestigation is conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation well I can't won't comment in this setting on any particular counterintelligence investigation it's important to understand how such investigations fit into and relate to the intelligence community and at least the general practice I follow during my time as DNI with respect to FBI counterintelligence investigations when the Intelligent obtains information suggesting that a u.s. person is acting on behalf of a foreign power the standard procedure is to share that information with the lead investigator ybody which of course is the FBI the bureau then decides whether to look into that information and handles any ensuing investigation if there is one given its sensitivity even the existence of a counterintelligence Investigations closely held including at the highest levels during my tenure as DNI it was my practice to defer to the FBI director both director Muller and then subsequently director Comey on whether when and to what extent they would inform me about such investigations this stems from the unique position of the di which straddles both intelligence and law enforcement and as a consequence I was not aware of the counterintelligence investigation director Comey first referred to during his testimony before the house permanent Select Committee for intelligence on the 20th of March and that comports with my public statements finally I'd like to comment on section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act as it's called what it governs and why it's vital this provision authorizes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to approve electronic surveillance of non-us person let me repeat that non-us person foreign intelligence targets outside the United States section 702 has been a tremendously effective tool in identifying terrorists and other threats to us but at the same time protecting the privacy and civil liberties of US persons and as the chairman chairman Graham indicated section 702 is do it for reauthorization by Congress this year it was renewed in 2012 for five years and expires on 31 December of this year with so many misconceptions flying around it would be tragic for section 702 to become a casualty of misinformation and for us to lose a tool that is so vital to the safety of this nation in conclusion Russia's influence activities in the run-up to the 2016 election constituted the high-water mark of their long-running efforts since the 1960s to disrupt and influence our elections they must be congratulating themselves for having exceeded their wildest expectations with a minimal expenditure of resource and I believe they are now emboldened to continue such activities in the future both here and around the world and to do so even more intensely if there has ever been a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundation of our democratic political system this episode is it I hope the American people recognize the severity of this threat and then we collectively counter it before it further erodes the fabric of our democracy I now turn to my former colleague acting Attorney General Sally Yates for any remarks that she has to make microphone Thank You chairman Graham ranking member Whitehouse and distinguished members of the subcommittee I'm pleased to appear before you this afternoon on this critically important topic of Russian interference in our last presidential election and the related topics that this subcommittee is investigating for 27 years I was honored to represent the people of the United States with the Department of Justice I began as an assistant United States attorney in Atlanta in the fall of 1989 and like all prosecutors I investigated and tried cases and worked hard to try to ensure the safety of our communities and that those who violated our laws were held accountable over time through five Republican and Democratic administrations I assumed greater leadership positions within the department in the US Attorney's Office in Atlanta I served as chief of the fraud and public corruption section as first Assistant United States Attorney and then was appointed United States Attorney and then I had the privilege of serving its Deputy Attorney General for a little over two years and finally the current administration asked me to stay on as Acting Attorney General throughout my time at the department I was incredibly fortunate to be able to work with the talented career men and women at the Department of Justice who followed the facts and applied the law with tremendous care and dedication and who are in fact the backbone of the Department of Justice and in every step in every position from AUSA to acting Attorney General I always tried to carry out my responsibility to seek justice in a way that would engender the trust and the confidence of the people whom I served I want to thank this subcommittee for conducting an impartial and thorough investigation of this vitally important topic the efforts by a foreign adversary to interfere and undermine our democratic processes and and those of our allies pose a serious threat to all Americans this hearing and others this subcommittee has conducted and will be conducting the future or an important bipartisan step and understanding the threat and the best ways to confront it going forward as the intelligence community assessed in its January of 2017 report Russia will continue to develop capabilities to use against the United States and we need to be ready to meet those threats I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to take part in today's discussion now I want to note that in my answers today I intend to be as fulsome and as comprehensive comprehensive as possible while respecting my legal and ethical boundaries as the subcommittee understands many of the topics of interest today concern classified information that I cannot address in this public setting my duty to protect classified information applies just as much as a former official as it did when I led the department in addition I'm obviously no longer with the Department of Justice and I am not authorized to generally discuss deliberations within DOJ or more broadly within the executive branch particularly on matters that may be the subject of ongoing investigations I take those obligations very seriously and I appreciate the subcommittee's shared interest in protecting classified information and preserving the integrity of any investigations that the Department of Justice may now be conducting I look forward to answering your questions thank you Sen Grassley would you like to make a statement okay okay all right you'll get to ask him senator Feinstein thank you very much mr. chairman and I'll be very brief we have prepared for the committee and I'd like to ask the staff to distribute it a background and timeline on Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and some of the key dates involved which may be of help to the subcommittee and I would just like to take this opportunity to thank the subcommittee chairman Graham and vite and ranking member Whitehouse I think you've done a good job in your hope subcommittee has and so thank you very very much I just like to make a few comments if I might and put all the remarks in the record I think it is a foregone conclusion about Russia's involvement and we see it replicated even in the French election perhaps not to the extent or in the way but certainly replicated on February 9th 2017 the Washington Post reported that either Flynn had misled the vice president or that pence had misspoken Lieutenant General Flynn resigned his post on February 13th four days after the Post broke this story there are still many unanswered questions about general Flynn including who know what who knew what and when for example the press is now reporting that in addition to the warning from Sally Yates concerns were raised by former President Obama directly to then president-elect Trump 95 days before Flynn resigned so the question what role did Flynn a in communications with the Russians both after the first warning by President Obama and then after the warning by Sally Yates and I hope to ask that today what role did Flynn play in high-level national security decisions again both during the 95 days and the 18 days when the White House was on notice so I look forward to hearing more about this from you acting Attorney General Yates you have stated that you warned the White House on January 26 nearly three weeks before Flynn resigned that he had not been truthful and might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail and finally there are other troubling questions regarding Russia's relationships and connections with Trump advisers and associates and there are questions about whether anyone was the target of Russian intelligence either to be exploited or cultivated so I will put my whole remarks in the record mr. chairman and I hope to ask some questions around these few comments thank you very much for this opportunity yes ma'am without objections mr. chairman may also put into the record a letter dated November 18 2016 from the ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight Government Reform representative Elijah Cummings giving then vice president-elect pence notice about certain what he called apparent conflicts of interest regarding general Flynn without objection and general clapper on March the 5th 2017 you said the following to a question here's the question does intelligence exist that can definitely answer the following question where there were improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials you said we did not include any evidence in our report and I say our that's the NSA the FBI see a with my office the Director of National Intelligence that had anything that had any reflection of collude collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians there was no evidence of that included in our report Chuck Todd then asked I understand that but does it exist you say no not to my knowledge is that still accurate those machines do you have any evidence are you aware of any evidence that would suggest that in the 2016 campaign anybody in the Trump campaign included colluded with the Russian government or intelligence services and in a proper fashion and Senator my answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information and so I can't answer that well and I don't get that because he just said he issued the report and he said he doesn't know of any so what would you know that's not in the report if I may ause meet her well I think that director clapper also said that he was unaware of the FBI counterintelligence investigate would it be fair to say that the counterintelligence investigation was not mature enough to come to his to get in the report is that fair mister mr. clapper I that's what is that's a possibility uh what I don't get is how the FBI can have a counterintelligence investigation suggesting collusion and you as Director of National Intelligence not know about it and the FBI sign on to a report that basically said there was no collusion I can only speculate well why that so there wasn't the evidence if there was any it didn't read it didn't reach the evidentiary bar in terms of the level of confidence that we were striving for in that intelligence community assessment okay that makes perfect sense to me follow up on that are you familiar with the dossier about mr. Trump compiled well some guy in England why are you did you find that to be a credible report well we didn't make a judgment on that and that's well that's one reason why we did not include it in the body of our intelligence community assessment he didn't find it credible enough to be included we couldn't corroborate the sourcing particularly the second third order sources mesh eights are you familiar with dossier microphone if I could try to clarify one answer before as well because I think Senator Graham you may have misunderstood me you asked me whether I was aware of any evidence of collusion and I declined to answer because entering would reveal classified information I believe that that's the same answer that director Comey gave to this committee when he was asked this question as well and he made clear and I'd like to make clear that just because I say I can't answer it you should not draw from that and assumption that that means that the answer is yes okay fair enough Inc if I may sir that this illustrates what I was trying to get at in my statement about the unique position that the FBI FBI straddles between intelligence and law enforcement I just want the touchiered you know that whatever they're doing on the counterintelligence side mr. clapper didn't know about it didn't make it in the report and we'll see what comes from it miss shades what did you tell the White House about mr. Flynn I had two in-person meetings and one phone call with the White House Counsel about mr. Flint the first meeting occurred on January 26 I called Don Magan first thing that morning and told him that I had a very sensitive matter that I needed to discuss with him that I couldn't talk about it on the phone and that I needed to come see him and he agreed to meet with me later that afternoon I took a senior member of the National Security Division who was overseeing this matter with me to meet with mr. McGann we met in his office at the White House which is asked if so we could discuss classified information in his office we began our meeting telling him that there had been press accounts of statements from the vice president and others that related conduct that mr. Flynn had been involved in that we knew not to be the truth and as I as I tell you what happened here again I'm going to be very careful not to reveal classified the reason you it wasn't true is because she had collected some intelligence from an incidental collection system is that fair to say and I can't answer that because that again would call me for me to reveal classified let me ask you this did anybody ever make a request to unmask the conversation between the Russian ambassador and mr. Flynn and again senator I can't answer a question like that well you know how about information the case I don't is no way to find that out uh well in another setting it could be disclosed that there is a record somewhere through it would make a request to unmask the conversation with general Flynn in the Russian desert well I'm sure if one was made they'd be a record of it I I can't speak to this specific case but I can generally comment that in the case of 702 requests yes those are all documented okay and I don't mean to interrupt you but this is important to me how did the conversation between the Russian ambassador and mr. Flynn make it to the Washington Post well which one of us you asking miss shake yeah that's a great question yeah all this hideouts I would like to know that I don't I don't know the answer to that yeah nor do I know the answer to that is it fair to say that if somebody did make an unmasking request we would know who they were and we could find out from them who they shared the information with is that fair to say the system would allow us to do what I just described well I'm asking requests are not made to the Department of Justice but to the agency he does the collection that's my understanding is there should be a record somewhere in our system whether or not an unmasking request was made for the conversation between mr. Flynn and the Russian ambassador we should be able to determine if it did if it was made who made it then we can ask what did they do with information is that a fair statement mr. clapper yes okay now what did you finish would you tell the White House right so I told them again that there were a number of press accounts of statements that have been made by the vice and other high-ranking White House officials about general Flint's conduct that we knew to be untrue and we told them how we knew that this how we had this information how we had acquired it and how we knew that it was untrue and we walked the White House Counsel who also had an associate there with him through general Flynn's underlying conduct the contents of which I obviously cannot go through today because it's classified but we took them through in a fair amount of detail of the underlying conduct what general Flynn had done and then we walk through the various press accounts and how it had been falsely reported we also told the White House Counsel that general Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI on February 24th Mr McGowan asked me how he did and I declined to give him an answer to that and we then walked through with mr. McGann essentially why we were telling them about this and the first thing we did was to explain to mr. McGann d't the underlying conduct that general Flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself secondly we told him we felt like the Vice President and others were entitled to know that the information that they were conveying to the American people wasn't true and we wanted to make it really clear right out of the gate that we were not accusing vice-president pence of knowingly providing false information to the American people and in fact mr. McGann responded back to me to let me know that anything that general Flynn would have said would have been based excuse me anything that vice-president pence would have said would have been based on what general Flynn had told him we told him the third reason was is because we were concerned that the American people had misled about the underlying conduct and what general Flynn had done and additionally that we weren't the only ones that knew all of this that the Russians also knew about what general Flynn had done and the Russians also knew that general Flynn had misled the vice president and others because in the media accounts it was clear from the vice president and others that they were repeating what general Flynn had told them and that this was a problem because not only did we believe that the Russians knew this but that they likely had proof of this information and that created a compromised situation a situation where the National Security Adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians finally we told them that we were giving them all of this information so that they could take action the action they deemed appropriate i remember that mr. McGann asked me whether or not general Flynn should be fired and I told him that that really wasn't our call that was up to them but that we were giving them this information so that they could take action and that was the first meeting thank you and I will go to survivin very quick question was or either one of you aware of incidental collection by our intelligence community of any presidential candidate staff or campaign during the 2016 election cycle was there any incidental collection where our intelligence community collects information involving a presidential candidate on either side of the aisle during 2015 or 2016 well not to my knowledge I believe director Comey was also asked this question and declined to answer it so I need to follow the same lines the DOJ is drawn again you should not draw from that that my answer is yes but rather that the answer would require me to reveal classified information thank you sir malaria my response is always a CLE following the Comey line the director testified a few days ago in the full committee that the FBI had interviewed mr. Flynn a day before or two days before your meeting at the White House and you just testified that you had told the White House Counsel that the FBI had interviewed Flynn and he'd asked McGann had asked how'd he do right did you have the 302 with you when you were in the White House did you show it to White House Counsel and had you seen it at the time you went up to the White House no on the FBI had conducted the interview on the 24th we got a readout from the FBI on the 25th a detailed readout specifically from the agents that had conducted the interview but we didn't want to wait for the 302 because we felt that it was important to get this information to the White House as quickly as possible so we had folks from the National Security Division who spent a lot of time with the agents not only finding out exactly how the interview went but how this impacted their investigation so did you take that summary with you do you have any document with you that described the FBI interview of general Flynn at the time that I was there I had notes that describe that interview as well as the individual that was with me the senior career official from the National Security Division had been part of all of those discussions with the FBI did you discuss criminal prosecution of mr. Flynn general Flynn my recollection is that did not really come up much in the first meeting it did come up in the second meeting when mr. McGann called me back the next morning and asked the morning after this is the morning of the 27th now and asked me if I could come back to his office and so I went back with the NSD official and there were essentially four topics that he wanted to discuss there and one of those topics was precisely that he asked about the applicability of certain statutes some certain criminal statutes and more specifically about second meeting at the White House the White House office in his office again in his office again with the same two individuals exactly on the following day right and you went back pursuant to a phone call request or was yes the more the morning of the 27th after our meeting had occurred on the afternoon of the 26 the morning of the 27th mr. McGann called me and asked if I could come back to the White House to discuss this further and we set up a time and I went over there that afternoon bringing again the same career official with me from National Security Division who was overseeing this investigation he had the same associate from the White House counsel's office and we talked through four to five more issues you could perhaps have waited until you actually had seen the agents 302 from the interview of general Flynn why go ahead of that why not wait well because this was a matter of some urgency we described in making the determination about notification here we had to balance a variety of interest for the reasons that I just described a few minutes ago we felt like it was critical that we get this information to the White House because in part because the Vice President was unknowingly making false statements to the public and because we believed that general Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians we were balancing this though against the FBI's investigation as you would always do and take into account the investigating agency's desires and concerns about how a notification might impact that ongoing investigation but once general Flynn was interviewed there was no longer a concern about an impact on an investigation do you know where that interview took place or under what circumstances I believe it took place at the White House the Flynn interview yes okay do you know if Flynn was represented by counsel at the time I don't believe he was okay and the scenario that you were concerned about was that you were seeing all these statements coming from the White House that were inconsistent with what you knew you presumed that the White House was being truthful which meant that Flynn was misleading them right which meant that he was vulnerable to manipulation by the Russians who knowing what had actually taken place could call up the national security advisor to the president and say you got to do this for us or we're going to help you with all your folks and your career is done that's right because one of the questions that mr. McCain asked me when I went back over the second day was essentially why does it matter to DOJ if one White House official lies to another White House official and so we explained to him it was a whole lot more than that and went back over the same concerns that we had raised with them the prior day that the concern first about the underlying conduct itself that he had lied to the vice president and others the American public had been misled and then importantly that every time this lie was repeated and the misrepresentations were getting more and more specific as they were coming out every time that happened it increased the compromise and you know to state the obvious you don't want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians were there any takeaways from the first meeting or action items that you left with well there was an action item in the second meeting because there I got we talked about several issues but to get the order right you said earlier that there were two meetings and a phone call right was the phone call the phone call to set up the second meeting or was our third there was a third substitute phone call there was a head about colic and yeah sorry about that um one of the one of the issues that mr. McGann raised with me in this second meeting that again was on the 27th the day after the first meeting was his concern because we had told him before that we were giving in this information so that they could take action and he said that they were concerned that taking action might interfere with the FBI investigation and we told him both the senior career official and I that he should not be concerned with it that general Flynn had been interviewed that their action would not interfere with any investigation and in fact I'll remember specifically saying you know it wouldn't really be fair of us to tell you this and then expect you to sit on your hands was the interview of general Flynn accelerated once you became aware of this information and felt you needed to get his statement quickly well we had wanted to tell the White House as quickly as possible and we're working with the FBI and in the course of the investigation but certainly we did as the Mississippian you know is that you have information that one thing was said and the White House is saying something different and you know that that information a respective of who is involved needs to get up to the White House quickly and so at that point the decision was made to do the interview so that that was locked down before you went up to White House Counsel right so that that would not have a negative impact on the FBI investigation at that point and there was a request made by mr. McGann in this second meeting as to whether or not they would be able to look at the underlying evidence that we had that we had described for him of general Flynn's conduct and we told him that we were inclined to allow them to look at that underlying evidence that we wanted to go back to DOJ and be able to make the logistical arrangements for that this second meeting on the 27th occurred late in the afternoon this is Friday the 27th so we told him that we would work with the FBI over the weekend on this issue and get back with him on Monday morning and I call the first thing Monday morning to let him know that we would allow them to come over and to review the underlying evidence and was that the phone call or is a separate phone call there was the phone call initially to let him know I needed to come see him yeah to meetings and then a phone call at the end to let him know um the material that the material was available yeah he had to call me back he was not available then and I did not hear back from him until that afternoon of Monday the 30th and that was the end of this episode nobody came over to look at the material I don't know what happened after that because that was my last day with dij got it okay yeah Sara grassland yeah mr. clapper you said that you've never exposed classified information in an inappropriate manner I asked director Comey these questions last week so for both of you yes or no as far as you know has any classified information relating to Mr Trumper or his associates been Declassified and shared with the media not to my knowledge miss gates not to my knowledge either uh next question have either of you ever been an anonymous source in a news report about matters relating to mr. Trump is associates or Russians attempt to meddle in the election no absolutely not okay third question did either of you ever authorize someone else at your respective organizations to be an anonymous source in a news report about mr. Trump or his associates no nothing as far as either of you know have any government agencies referred any of the leaks over the past several months to the Justice Department for potential criminal investigation I don't know as you know senator there is a process for that for doing that I don't know if that that's happened me Shh I'm not a DOJ anymore so I don't know what's been referred so then I guess kind of sum up neither one of you know whether the department authorized a criminal investigation of the leaks I do not sir yes agree have any of you been questioned by the FBI about any leaks uh I have not been no okay I want to discuss unmasking uh mr. clapper initiates did either of you ever requests the unmasking of mr. Trump his associates or any member of Congress yes and in one case I did but I can't discuss it any further than that you can't so if I asked you for details you said you can't discuss that is that what you said not not here okay in she vitiates can you answer that equation did you ever request unmasking of mr. Trump his associates or any member of Congress no question - did either of you ever review classified documents in which mr. Trump his associates or members of Congress had been unmasked oh yes you have can you give us details here and there's no I can make shades have you yes I have and no I can't give you details okay did either of you ever share information about unmask Trump associates or members of Congress with anyone else well I'm thinking back over six and a half years I could have discussed it with either my deputy or my general counsel okay vitiated in the course of the Flynn matter I had discussions with other members of the Intel community I'm not sure if that's responsive to your question and in both cases you can't give details here no no the if the FBI notified the Democratic National Committee of the Russians intrusion into their systems in August of 2015 but the DNC and down the FBI offered to get the Russians out and refused the FBI access to their servers instead it evidently eventually hired a private firm in the spring of 2016 WikiLeaks began releasing the hacked DNC emails last July it took roughly 27,000 of the 27,500 DNC emails it released were emails sent after the FBI notified the DNC of the breach mr. clapper would you agree that one of the lessons of this episode is that people should cooperate with the FBI when notified of foreign hacks instead of stonewalling yes sir I generally think that's a very good idea mr. clapper you sent the Russians or you said the Russians did not release any negative information on Republican candidates I believe that that's not quite right On June the 15th 2016 lucifer 2.0 released the to Gawker and The Smoking Gun more than 200 pages of the DNC s opposition research on mr. Trump's hundreds of pages of what I would call dirt this happened just two days after the Wall Street Journal published a plan for Republican convention delegates to revolt to prevent mr. Trump from securing the nomination why wasn't why wasn't the Russian release of harmful information about mr. Trump addressed in the ratio report and was this even evaluated during the review I would have to consult with the analysts that were involved in the report to definitely answer that I don't know personally whether they considered that or not can you submit that as an answer in writing well I'm a private citizen now sir I don't know what what the rules are my obtaining classified information classified information so I will look into it okay mr. clapper you testified that the intelligence community conducted an exhaustive review of Russian interference in an analyst involved had complete unfettered access to all sensitive raw intelligence data do you have any reason to believe that any agency will withheld any relevant information I don't believe so with one potential caveat which is that there is the possibility again acknowledging this role that the FBI plays in straddling both intelligence and law enforcement that for whatever reason they may have chosen to withhold investigatory sensitive information from the report I don't know that to be a fact I was not a prize of that I'm just suggesting out as a possibility a my time's up mr. chairman thank you thank you senator Feinstein thank thanks very much mr. chairman the c8 so I'm not going to ask you anything that deserves a confidential or secure answer but after your second in-person meeting with mr. McGann you said there were four topics he wanted to discuss would you list those four topics sure the first topic in the second meeting was essentially why does it matter to DOJ if one White House official lies to another the second topic related to the applicability of criminal statutes and the likelihood that the Department of Justice would pursue a criminal case the third topic was his concern that they're taking action might interfere with an investigation of mr. Flynn and the fourth topic was his request to see the underlying evidence we're all those topics satisfied with respect to your impression after the second meeting yes the only thing that was really left open there was the logistics for us to be able to make arrangements for them to look at the underlying evidence and you did make those arrangements we did make those arrangements but again I don't know whether that ever happened whether they ever looked at that evidence or not fair enough apparently lieutenant general Flynn remain and as national security adviser for 18 days after you raise the Justice Department's concern in your view during those 18 days did the risk that Flynn had been or could be compromised diminish at all you know I don't know that I'm in a position to really have an answer for that I know that we were really concerned about the compromise here and that was the reason why we were encouraging them to act I don't know what steps they may have taken if any during that 18 days to minimize the risk did you discuss this with other DOJ career professionals certainly leading up to our notification on the 26 it was a topic of a whole lot of discussion in DOJ and with other members of the Intel community and we discussed it at great length but after the 30th again I wasn't at DOJ anymore so I didn't have any further discussions after that point about what was being done with respect to that did you consult with other career prosecutors oh absolutely we had really the experts within the National Security Division as we were navigating this situation they were working with the FBI on the investigation and we were trying to make a determination about how best to make this notification so that we could get the information to the White House that they needed to be able to act so was the point that you were trying to make know we'll be fine that general Flynn had seriously compromised the security of the United States and possibly the government by what he had done whatever that was well our point was is that logic would tell you that you don't want the National Security Adviser to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him now in terms of what impact that may have had or could have had I can't speak to that but we knew that that was not a good situation which is why we wanted to let the White House know about it The Guardian has reported that Britain's intelligence service first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious interactions between Trump advisers and Russian intelligence agents this information was passed on to US intelligence agencies over the spring of 2016 multiple European allies passed on additional information to the United States about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians is this accurate I can't answer that general clapper is that accurate uh yes it is and it's also quite sensitive okay let me ask you this the specifics are quite sensitive when did components of the intelligence community open investigations into the interactions between Trump advisors and Russians what was the question again I'm sorry when did components of the intelligence community open investigations into the interactions between Trump advisers and Russians well I can refer to director Comey's statement before the House Intelligence Committee on the 20th of March is when he advised that they'd open an investigation in July of 16 and what was the reaction when you advised that the investigation be opened as early as July 15th I'm sorry I thought you said that you advised on joy director Comey did before the House Intelligence Committee I see announce that the FBI to initiate an investigation in July of 2016 well what did the intelligence agencies do with the findings that I just spoke about that the Guardian wrote about well I'm not sure about the accuracy of that article so clearly over actually going back to 2015 there was evidence of Soviet Russian excuse me 14 slip Russian activity mainly in an information gathering or reconnoitering mode where they were investigating voter registration rolls and the like and that that activity started early and so we were monitoring this as as it progressed and certainly as it picked up accelerated in summer spring summer and fall of 2016 okay so let me go back to you miss Yates I take it you were very concerned what was your prime worry during all of this now you were worried that but yeah general Flynn would be compromised what did you think would happen if he were and how do you believe he would have been compromised well we had two concerns compromise was certainly the number one concern and you know the Russians can use compromise material information in a variety of ways sometimes overtly and sometimes subtly and again our concern was is that you have a very sensitive position like the National Security Adviser and you don't want that person to be in a position where again the Russians have leverage over him but I will also say we another motivating factor is that we felt like the Vice President was in tug to know that the information he had been given and that he was relying to the American public wasn't true so what you're saying is that general Flynn lied to the vice president that's that's certainly how it appeared yes because the Vice President went out and made statements about general Flynn's conduct that he said were based on what general Flynn had told him and we knew that that just flat wasn't true well as the days went on what was your view of the situation because there were I guess two weeks before was it 18 days before the director Flynn was dismissed well again that was no longer with DOJ after the 30th and so I wasn't having interaction or any any involvement in this issue after that day Thank You mr. chairman senator Cornyn thank you chairman Graham and Senator Whitehouse for this today's hearing this is important the American people have every right to know as much as possible about Russian interference in our elections but as I think as the director has told us before many times this is not anything new although perhaps the level and intensity and the sophistication of both Russian overt and covert operations is really unprecedented and I thank the intelligence community for their assessment I do regret that these while these two witnesses are certainly welcome and we're glad to have them here that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice is refused to testify in front of the committee it seems to me there are a lot of questions that need that she needs to answer I would point out though that mr. chairman that both senator Feinstein and I are fortunate enough to be on the Senate Intelligence Committee which is also conducting a bipartisan investigation under the leadership of Chairman buran vice chairman Warner one of the benefits of that additional investigation is that we have been given access to the raw intelligence collected by the intelligence community which I think completes what understandably is an incomplete picture when you can only talk in a public setting about part of the evidence but it is important for the American people to understand what what's happening I think this subcommittee hearing is playing an important role in that I want to ask director clapper because I think unfortunately some of the discussion about unmasking is casting suspicion on the intelligence community in a way that I think is frankly concerning particularly when we're looking at reauthorizing section 702 of the Patriot Act by the end of the next year because as many have said I can't read what you call your specific words but I know director Comey is called that the crown jewels of the intelligence community and I am very concerned that some of the information that's been discussed about unmasking for example might cause some people to worry about their pledge intimate privacy concerns so when it comes to incidental collection on an American person and that is unmasked at the request of some appropriate Authority can you describe briefly the paper trail and the series and the approval process that is required in order to allow that to have that's not a trivial matter is it Oh at the end of the process is that first of all the judgment as to whether or not to unmask or reveal the identity is rendered by the original collection agency so normally that's going to be the case 702 are going to be NSA and I know from my part because as I indicated my statement over my six and half years is DNI I occasionally asked for identities to be unmasked to understand the context what I was concerned about and those of us the intelligent you are concerned about is the behavior of the validated foreign intelligence target is that target trying to coop recruit bribe penetrate or what and it's very difficult to understand that context by the labels us person one us person two and as well I should point out doing that on a anecdotal basis on one SIGINT report at a time in which you need to look at is era is there a pattern here and so I tried on my part to be very very judicious about that it's a very sensitive thing but I did feel an obligation as DNI that I should attempt to understand the context and who this person was because that had a huge bearing on how important or critical it was at what threat might be posed by virtue of the again the behavior of the four validated foreign intelligence targets so our focus was on the target not it's not as much as the u.s. person only to understand the context well the fact that some appropriate authority might request and receive the unmasking of the name of the u.s. person does not then authorize the release of that information that classified information into the public domain that remains a crime does it not yes that's why I attempted to make to clarify in my state machine that was unleashed goodbye that's why in my statement I tempted to make that distinction between unmasking an authorized legitimate process with approval by the appropriate authorities and leaking which is an unauthorized process under any circumstance mr. Chairman I think it's really important that in order to determine who actually requested the unmasking and in order to establish whether appropriate procedures were undertaken under both legislative oversight and judicial oversight that we determine what that paper trail is and follow it we're important if I may I just I have to be very careful here about how i phrase this but I would just repeat to you the definition of what 702 is used for for in his collection against a non-us person overseas I don't think you could say that enough director clapper it's important because people need to understand that happy to say it again we are both getting inflation intelligence to keep the American people safe but also respecting the privacy rights in the constitutional rights of American citizens absolutely this Yates this is the first time that you've appeared before Congress since you left the Department of Justice and I just wanted to ask you a question about the your decision to refuse to defend the president's executive order in the letter that you sent to Congress you point out that the executive order itself was drafted in consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel and you point out that the office of legal counsel reviewed it to determine whether in its view the proposed executive order was lawful on its face and properly drafted is it true that the office of legal counsel didn't conclude that it was lawful on its face and properly drafted yes they did the office knew overruled them I did the opposite look what what is your authority to to overrule the office of legal counsel when it comes to a legal determination the office of legal counsel has a narrow function and that is to look at the face of an executive order and to determine purely on its face whether there is some set of circumstances under which at least some part of the executive order may be lawful and importantly they do not look beyond the face of the executive order for example its statements that are made contemporaneously or prior to the execution of the EO that may bear on its intent and purpose the that office does not look at those factors and in determining the constitutionality of this executive order that was an important analysis to engage in and one that I did well as Yates I thought the Department of Justice had a long-standing tradition of defending a presidential action in court if there are reasonable arguments in its favor regardless of whether those arguments might prove to be ultimately persuasive which of course is up to the courts to decide and not you correct it is correct that often times but not always the Civil Division of the Department of Justice will defend an action of the President or inaction of Congress if there is a reasonable argument to be made but in this instance all all arguments have to be based on truth because we're the Department of Justice were not just a law firm we're the Department of Justice and this is a truth from lawful yes because in this instance in looking at what the intent was of the executive order which was derived in part from an analysis of facts outside the face of the order that that is part of what led to our conclusion that it was not lawful yes well miss Yates you had a distinguished career for 27 years of the Department of Justice and I voted for your confirmation because I believe that you had a distinguished career but I have to tell you that I find it enormously disappointing that you somehow veto the decision of the office of legal counsel with regard to the lawfulness of the president's order and decided instead that you would counterman the executive order the president nighted states because you happen to disagree with it as a policy matter well it wasn't works I just have to say that I appreciate that Senator and let me make one thing clear it was not purely as a policy matter and in fact I'll remember my confirmation hearing in an exchange that I had with you and and others of your colleagues where you specifically asked me and in that hearing that if the president asked me to do something that was unlawful or unconstitutional and one of your colleagues that or even just that would reflect poorly on the Department of Justice would I say no and I looked at this I made a determination that I believed that it was unlawful I also thought that it was inconsistent with the principles of the Department of Justice and I said no and that's what I promised you I would do and that's what I did I don't know how you can say that it was lawful and say that it was within your prerogative to refuse to defend it in a court of law and leave it for the court to decide senator I did not say it was lawful I said it was unlawful senator Durbin's next but I have one quick if you don't mind certain German about how 702 works you said something general clapper I don't quite understand is it unlawful to surveil with a FISA warrant a foreign agent in the United States no it's not but that's another provision I was saying what 700 make sure there is a procedure to do there is okay Senator Durbin but just to your point you said the word overseas ambassador kiss lyac was not overseas on December 29th let's correct thank you Thank You mr. chairman let me say at the outset in response to Senator Cornyn and your conclusion about the unlawful nature of the Muslim travel ban was of course a position which was supported by three different federal courts that stopped the enforcement of that ban and ultimately led to the president withdrawing that particular travel ban is that not true that's correct thank you I want to mention at the outset here that this is a critically important hearing I want to thank Senator Graham and Senator Whitehouse for the bipartisan nature and the coop in this hearing I think the testimony we received from these witnesses in the end the presence of so many other my colleagues is an indication of how we view the severity and gravity of the issue before us I am troubled that this great committee with its great Chairman and all its members does not have professional staff assigned to this investigation it's the ordinary staff of the subcommittee who are working it I think what we have seen with this situation calls for the the appointment of an independent commission Presidential Commission or congressional action one that is clearly independent transparent and can get to the bottom of the Russian involvement in our last election process and the threat that faces we face in the future because of it short of that we'll continue to do our best on a committee level with meager resources and both the Intelligence Committee and here and this is I think an issue that begs for so much more I might also say that I'm starting to hear from the Republican side of the table some real concern about section 702 which senator Lee Republican member the committee and myself have been calling for reform on for several years unfortunately we didn't have the support from the other side of the table when we did I hope that we can get it now when we talk about real reform the 702 and protecting the rights of individuals in America Missy eighths let me ask you about this meeting on January 26 with white House Counsel down Magan you shared the Justice Department's concern about his communications with Russia his apparent dishonesty about those communications and his vulnerability to blackmail is that correct that's right was there anything else about the relationship of general Flynn and the Russians other than his representations that he had no conversations you warned on began about no so it didn't go back to his trip to Moscow money received and so forth no it did not it was strictly on that question yes and then you had a second meeting the next day that's right correct in January the 27th at his request yes mr. McGann's request and at that second meeting did mr. McGann say anything about whether he had taken the end Meishan you're giving the previous date to the president no he didn't tell us are you aware of the fact that mr. Spicer the White House press secretary on February 14 said and I quote immediately after the Department of Justice notified the White House Council of the situation the White House Counsel briefed the president and a small group of senior advisors I've seen media reports to that effect but that's all I know is from the media so there was no statement by mr. McGann that he had either spoken to the president about your concerns with his national security adviser or with any other members of the White House no he didn't advise us in the second meeting anyone he may have discussed this with um at the prior evening I guess I'm one also go to the question which I keep smiling at me here that mr. McGann asked of you is there anything wrong with one White House official lying to another White House official well I to be fair to mr. McGann here I wouldn't say that he said is there anything wrong his question was more essentially what's it to the Justice Department if one White House official is lying to another in other words why is this something that DOJ would be concerned about and that's why we went back through the list of issues and reasons why this was troubling to us did you think there was a legal reason to be concerned if one White House official lied to another White House official we didn't go in to that and to the extent you may be talking about like a thousand and one violation that was not something that we were alluding to or discussing with mr. McGann I think his point when he made that made that point to me was that he wasn't sure why the Department of Justice would care about one line to another not not to be discussing whether that was in fact a crime and the reason you told him was what was that again it was a whole lot more than one White House official lying to another first of all it was the vice president of the United States and the Vice President had then gone out and provided that information to the American people who had then been misled and the Russians knew all of this making Mike Flynn compromised - now you said earlier I believe that mr. began asked you if you thought they should fire general flame at that point right and what was your response it was not our call as to whether general Flynn was fired that we were giving them this information so that they could take action the action that they believed was appropriate on February 14th after general Flynn resigned Sean Spicer said and I quote there was nothing in what general Flynn did in terms of conducting himself that was an issue do you have any idea what he meant by those words no I'm not - all I can say is he didn't reach that conclusion from his conversation with us I can't speak to how he how he arrived at that let me ask you there was a period of time 18 days that we've referred to during the course of this and we had a period of 18 days a number of things occurred general Flynn continued to serve as the national security adviser for 18 days after you had briefed the White House about the counterintelligence risk that he posed and during those 18 days general Flynn continued to hire key senior staff on the National Security Council announced new sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a along with President trumpet Mara Lago and participated in discussions about responding to a North Korean missile launch and spoke repeatedly to depressed about his communications with Russian ambassador kizlet vitiates in your view were there national security concerns and these decisions being made after the information you shared with the White House I was no longer with DOJ after January 30th so I wasn't aware of any actions that the general Flynn was taking so I couldn't really opine on that general clapper would you comment if you had the warning from the White House apart me from the Department of Justice to the White House about general Flynn possibly being compromised here and then these important national security decisions that followed would you have concern about that well I would hypothetically yes I mean again I was gone from the government as well listen up you've had quite a career in intelligence and national security and here you have a man that's been told the White House has been told he could be compromised in blackmailed by the Russians continuing to make the highest level decisions of our government well is that's is certainly a potential vulnerability there's no question about it I would say so thank you very much thanks mr. chary Thank You mr. chairman thank you to the witnesses for being here today mr. clapper you testified as to the harms that come from leaks the harms that can come to our national security and you also testified about the importance of protecting classified information and keeping it classified during your many years in intelligence and at the DNI have you ever knowingly forwarded classified information to a non-government employee on a non-government computer who did not have authorization to receive that information not to me not to my recollection no sir and director clapper what would you do at the DNI if you discovered that an employee of yours had forwarded hundreds or even thousands of emails to a non-government individual their spouse on a non-government computer well you know I'm not a Provost Kotori or prosecutorial element but if I were aware of it I would certainly make known to the appropriate officials that that was going on would that strike you as anything ordinary uh hopefully not what concerns would that raise for you well it raises all kinds of potential security concerns again depending on on the the content of the email what the intent was there's a whole bunch of variables here that would have to be considered but you know potentially again this is a hypothetical scenario it could be quite concerning what would you expect to happen if you made a referral of an individual who had forwarded hundreds or even thousands of classified information on government employee Peter whatever the transgression potential transgression was if there were sufficient evidence of a compromise we would file a crimes report that's the standard procedure that we use when there's the potential for investigating and prosecuting someone last week I asked similar questions to FBI director Comey and and he said an individual who did that would be subject quote significant administrative discipline but that he was highly confident they wouldn't be prosecuted do you share that assessment well I don't know I don't know I think the the track record is at the prior administration I think prosecuted more people for leaking and anyone in any any other administration in the past so it's difficult to do that and there are many cases we could not prosecute or even seek a crimes report because the potential audience of people that could have been a perpetrator of these insecurities could not be identified it is true that other individuals who were not in the direct employ of the Democratic nominee for president were prosecuted for that conduct let me let me shift to a different topic director clapper you also testified that you're not aware of any intercepted communications of any presidential candidates or campaigns other than the Trump campaign that's been discussed here is that correct uh yes but that's to my knowledge but you know prior administrations prior campaigns that wouldn't have been visible to me so I can't I can't say but in 2016 you're not aware of any other campaigns or candidates no and Missy AIT's the same question to you I'm not aware of any interceptions of the Trump campaign and are you aware of any intercepted communications of any other candidates or campaigns no okay because earlier when Chairman Graham Graham had asked you that I thought you declined to answer so perhaps I missed and I may have misunderstood the question I thought the question I declined to answer was a different one than that so I'm glad I got a chance to clear it up okay so you have no information of any interceptions of the Bernie Sanders campaign Hillary Clinton campaign or any other candidates you have 2016 or campaigns yeah okay let's revisit the topic miss eighths that you and Senator Cornyn were talking about okay is it correct that the Constitution vests the executive authority in the president yes and if an attorney general disagrees with a policy decision of the president a policy decision that is lawful does the Attorney General have the authority to direct the Department of Justice to defy the president's order I don't know whether the Attorney General has the authority to do that or not but I don't think it would be a good idea and that's not what I did in this case well are you familiar with 8 USC Section 1182 not off the top of my head no well it is the binding statutory authority for the executive order that you refused to implement and that led to your termination so it certainly is irrelevant and not a terribly obscure statute by this express text of the statute it says quote whenever the president finds that the entry of any alien or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States he may by Proclamation and for such period as he shall deem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non immigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem appropriate would you agree that that is broad statutory authorization I would and I am familiar with that and I'm also familiar with an additional provision of the ia that says no person shall receive preference or be discriminated against an issuance of a visa because of race nationality or place of birth that I believe was promulgated after the statute that you just quoted and that's been part of the discussion with the courts with respect to the IAA is whether this more specific statute Trump's the first one that you just described concern was not an ia concern here it rather was a constitutional concern whether or not this the executive order here violated the Constitution specifically with the Establishment Clause an equal protection and due process there is no doubt the arguments you laid out or arguments that we can expect litigants to bring partisan litigate grints who disagree with the policy decision of the president I would note on January 27th 2017 the Department of Justice issued an official legal decision a determination by the office of legal counsel that the executive order and I'll quote from the opinion the proposed order is approved with respect to form and legality that's a determination from olc On January 27th that it was legal three days later you determined using your own words that although LLC had had opined on legality it had not addressed whether it was quote wise or just and I also in that same directive senator said that I was not convinced it was lawful I also made the point that the office of OLC looks purely at the face of the document and again makes a determination as to whether there is some set of circumstances under which some portion of that AO would be enforceable would be lawful they importantly do not look outside the face of the document and in this particular instance particularly where we were talking about a fundamental issue of religious freedom not the interpretation of some arcane statute but religious freedom it was appropriate for us to look at the intent behind the president's actions and the intent is laid out in a very very brief question in the over 200 years of the Department of Justice history are you aware of any instance in which the Department of Justice has formally approved the legality of a policy in three days later the Attorney General has directed the department not to follow that policy and to defy that policy I'm not but I'm also not aware of a situation where the office of legal counsel was advised not to tell the Attorney General about it until after it was over thank you miss yes I I would note that might be the case if there's reason to suspect partisanship sentence senator Klobuchar thank you I want to thank you very much for your service miss Yates from beginning to end your distinguished career as a prosecutor and I just was putting this timetable together and I realized that your second meeting when you went over to the White House to warn them of general Flynn's line and his connections with Russia was the same day that this refugee order came out and it was the same day that you had to leave the Justice Department so you when did you meet with the White House Council on that day I met with white House Counsel best I can recall about three o'clock in the afternoon and on the 30th there and during that meeting did they mention anyone mention that this refugee order was about to come out did no acting Attorney General of the United States no and that was one thing that was of concern to us is that not only was Department leadership not consulted here and beyond Department leadership really the subject matter experts the national security experts not only was the department not consulted we weren't even told about it and I learned about this for media reports so you learned about it after the meeting at the White House Counsel from the media right and then it's true that during your hearing then senator sessions now the Attorney General actually asked you if the views the president wants to execute our unlawful should the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General say no and what did you say and I said yes the Attorney General should okay and then moving forward here as was mentioned by Senator Durbin this order was was after a lawsuit from the state of Washington and Minnesota the court basically challenged the constitutionality the order the order is not taken effect but what I want to get to right now is the fact that the administration then withdrew its request for an appeal of the court ruling blocking implementation of the same order and then they changed the order that you would not right and there were a number of important distinctions between travel ban 1 and travel ban two at the time I had to make my decision for example the executive orders still applied to green card holders lawful permanent residents and those who had visas there were a number of other distinctions as well and looking thank you they one thing that I want to get on ok sorry but go ahead very quickly look I understand that you know people of goodwill and who are good folks can make different decisions about this I understand that but all I can say is that I did my job the best way I knew how I looked at this ayoh I looked at the law I talked with the folks at the Department of Justice gathered them all to get their views and their input and I did my job ok I appreciate that let's go to Russia December 29th this is the date that actually senator Graham and I were with Senator McCain hearing about Russian interference meeting with leaders in the Baltics Georgia and Ukraine this is the date that the president expanded the sanctions against Russia and this is a date that Michael Flynn reportedly talked to the Russians perhaps several times about sanctions he then went on to not tell the truth to the vice president and one of the White House officials has described the notification that you provided warning them of this as a heads-up how would you describe a heads-up well at the risk of trying to characterize I mean we were there to tell the White House about something we were very concerned about and emphasized to them repeatedly it was so that they could take action that was much more formal than just a simple hey this is happening Michael Flynn did not resign his position as national security adviser until February 13th that is 18 days after you went over there with the formal warning and in particular after they knew about this on january 28th Flynn was allowed to join President Trump on an hour-long telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin do you have any doubt that the information that you conveyed to the White House on January 26 should have been made clear that Flynn had been potentially compromised by Russia that this information was clear well the purpose in our telling them again was so that they could act and so that they could convey that information so I would hope that they did um if a high-ranking national security official is caught on tape with a foreign officials saying one thing in private and then caught in public saying another thing to the vice president is that material for blackmail certainly do you want to add anything to that director clapper no okay I think it's pretty clear and I think it's pretty clear why we've had this hearing today I wanted to ask you director clapper a few things about just in general this Russian influence when director Comey was here last week he said I think that one of the lessons that the Russians may have drawn from this he's talking about the election the influence is that this works those were commis words do you agree absolutely and as I said in my statement the Russians have to be celebrating the success of what they for what they set out to do with rather minimal resource expenditure and the first objective was to sow discord and dissension which they certainly did and when you look at this in addition to the hacking into the DNC and Podesta the emails all those things we also had the fake news propaganda which is referenced in the report I believe it's 200 million dollars is that all they spent in the scheme of things some if that which doesn't include government support to subsidies to RT and and how does our T work when you look at the party is essentially a propaganda mouthpiece for the government since the predominance of its funding comes from from the government and the management is close to Putin so it's it's a as I say I think a governmental Russian governmental mouthpiece I'm Missy H I'm asking you in your capacity as a former attorney general and Deputy Attorney General might ask this of director Comey about the use of shell corporations now something like 50% of real-estate deals over five million dollars are now done with shell corporations we're trying to push so that the Treasury Department puts more transparency this is something that the European countries are working on right now and I'm very concerned that this is another vehicle where money is laundered I'm concerned about loopholes in our campaign finance laws as well but could you address this just from your experience as a criminal prosecutor sure and those are all valid concerns we're actually lagging behind other countries in the world and we don't want to become a haven then where you can have shell corporations that can be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes they can have national security implications as well as criminal implications director cooperated you want to add anything to that and again this is why I believe an independent commission in addition to the great work that's being done by this subcommittee and the Senate Intelligence Committee which is so important as well as the investigation an independent commission would allow a panel of experts to go into the next election go into 2020 where director Comey had said I expect to see them back in 2018 and especially 2020 those are his words do you agree with that right absolutely and that is why an independent commission would allow us to come up with some ideas and how we can stop this from happening again whether it is how the media handled these things how campaigns handle these things how intelligence agencies when they find out handle these things because we cannot allow foreign countries to influence our democracies do you agree director clapper I certainly do and I understand how critical leaks are and unmasking and all these ancillary issues but to me that the transcended issue here is the Russian interference in our election process and what that means to the erosion of the fundamental fabric of our democracy and that to me is a huge deal and they're going to continue to do it and why not it proved successful thank you until they pay a price I hope which they will soon pay senator sass Thank You mr. chairman thank you both for being here director clapper how likely do you think it is that foreign intelligence services are trying to compromise congressional IT systems well I think that's the congressional IT systems are a target and have been and certainly I saw examples of that during my time my time is DNI and then the this is one case where we expeditiously informed the Congress when we saw evidence of that and again that's not just Russians there are others out there doing the same thing and what Intel value would it provide to them well depending on the nature of the material that they purloined it could be quite sensitive that hard to make a general statement about it but just as a general rule it could be quite damaging and could you talk a little bit about the relationship between that particular Intel gathering on legislators and the interface with propaganda campaigns such as you say Russia I've heard you testify in other places about Russia's activity among their near neighbors what's the relationship between propaganda and direct Intel gathering amine on the part of the Russians yeah well their neighbor they would certainly use that as as they have and examples of that in places like Georgia and the Baltics where they will turn evidence that or what they've gathered and use that as as leverage or if they can to use a complement to the the Russian acronym for a compromise of material whether real or contrived so there's all kinds of nefarious things they can potentially do with if they gather information like that one of the unhelpful ways that we talk about this issue in the present context in DC's polarized context is it's almost always retrospective about our election in 2016 and so it devolves into a shirts and skins exercise about what candidate you allegedly supported director Comey last week said that he expects as senator Klobuchar just quoted him he expects the Russians to be back in 2018 and back with a vengeance in 2020 I think would be helpful for the American people to understand what Russia does among near neighbors now so could you unpack a little bit more of how that were all there of anything in many ways particularly those countries that were in the former Soviet orbit which they still feel shall I say paternal about and so places like Moldova or the Baltics Georgia they are very aggressive in using all the multitude of tools that were on senator Whitehouse's checklist wherever they can however they however they can to influence the outcome of elections towards candidates or whatever office whom they think will be more pliant with them and and of course what's new and different here is that that aggressiveness is spreading into Western Europe as we've seen I believe in France and will in Germany and and their relatives in their mind success at doing this is simply going to reinforce so all the tools they available to them active propaganda financing candidates sympathetic to their cause trolls hacking revelations of confidential emails whatever it is they'll use that to a fair they will and could you give us some sense of that without revealing classified information the order of magnitude of their financial investment in these kinds of efforts if you're a near neighbor of Russia and you've got your Army Navy Air Force Marines and you might have a little bit of a an Intel community and a little bit of a sort of Intel ops info ops campaign going how does what is the Russian investment I can't I can't give you a figure I will say though that in comparison to classical military expenditures its to bargain for them and of course what they're looking for particularly in Europe is so dissension a split unity and of course and sanctions and if they can drive wedges between an among Europe in nations by and particularly by their manipulating and influencing elections they're going to do it director do you stand by the ICS January assessment that WikiLeaks is a known propaganda platform for Russia absolutely and I am an agreement with director Pompey owes characterization of WikiLeaks as a non nation state intelligence service unpack that a little bit more if that's the case then you're saying that join Assange is not a journalist you're asking the wrong guy a question like that absolutely not I mean reasonable people in the American debate are worried when they hear people in the IC talk about something that sounds like it's just information I'm obviously highly skeptical of mr. Assange and I've been pushing the Justice Department to ask why we have not been taking steps to prosecute him for particular crimes that have endangered American intelligence assets but across the continuum of journalists who are legitimate journalists who are trying to get information to help the American people under our First Amendment be fully informed about the operations of their government there are people in the journalistic community who will lean on IC resources to say we want to know all that you're able to tell us and the burden of proof the burden is on the intelligence official not to leak classified information the burden is not on the journalists does not ask hard questions though so it's useful for the American people to hear you explain why is Assange something other than just an American journalist asking hard questions well I think in there there's there's obviously judgment here and when a journalist does does harm to the country harms our national security compromises sensitive sources and methods and tradecraft and puts the company the country deliberately puts the cut the country in jeopardy I think that that's the line is is craw that surrend use a use a phrase that I think is on is unacceptable have any unauthorized disclosures for massage and WikiLeaks directly endangered Americans and American interests in the pet yes absolutely Thank You Missy I wanted to ask you a couple of questions but I'm almost at my time so I'll limit it to one could you please explain the bureaucratic process in which concerning information about political appointees would be brought to the attention of the Attorney General just give us a few steps and how that process would happen when you say concerning information what do you mean if I'm trying to elicit an answer from you that doesn't require you to say that related to Flint particularly you can't disclose how this happened I think it would be useful for the public to understand more generally how information about a political appointee would be brought to the Attorney General from the FBI and other aspects of the intelligence community generally if we discovered information let's say an investigative agency like FBI discovered information about a political appointee they would first get in contact with the relevant division of the Department of Justice that would have jurisdiction over it whether it's the Criminal Division the National Security Division whatever it might be they would report that information there and then depending on the seriousness event information it would probably make its way to me when I was Deputy Attorney General or than acting Attorney General thank you thank you senator Graham I want to thank both of you for your decades of dedicated service and intelligence and law enforcement and for your testimony here today the question before us is one of really grave consequence as you suggested in your opening statements a really an existential threat to our democracy which if not faced appropriately will simply encourage increased aggressive actions the reality is that a foreign adversary intentionally influenced our 2016 presidential election and our president may not want to confront this but it is a reality and one that our US intelligence community agreed about with very high confidence I greatly appreciate senators Graham and Whitehouse in convening this hearing and entreating this very real threat to our democracy with the seriousness that it deserves a former director clapper in your opening statement you suggested that the Russians should be celebrating and that they are likely emboldened because they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and minimal cost and they are likely to continue in the French national elections which just concluded yesterday there was a stunning dump of hacked emails at the last moment in an attempt at least believed to influence the outcome of that election in a way designed to help advance a candidate favored by the Kremlin and in that instance there was a significant amount of fake news of manufactured articles mixed in with seemingly actual emails that had been hacked and there are allegations that there was coordination between all right news sites trying to forward this information and to get it out around France and around the world is that your understanding of what's just happened in France and more importantly was there any evidence that you saw of comparable coordination between alt-right news sites and released information in the attempts to influence the 2016 American presidential election sir kunis t only knows when I'm reading in the media and so I don't have access to any intelligence information that would help me cast any light it could sort actively answer your question I all I know it's what's what's in the media but during the period when you did have regular access to intelligence did you see any evidence to suggest that the long-standing Russian practice of spreading misinformation in fake news was being amplified by new sites in the United States and any reason to believe that might have been coordinated or intentional well I don't know about the latter but I and I think some news outlets were probably probably unwitting of that it's certainly one on but I can't say to what extent that was coordinated intentionally with with certain news outlets and you can that's a kind of in the domestic room you said that the Russians will continue this behavior until we impose some significant costs could you speak briefly to what sort of actions you think we might take that would deter them well I'll just say in this action that's a little over my labor great as an intelligence guy I thought the sanctions that we did impose as a and I was part of that as part of the foreigner the former administration were a great first step well simply say that I agree with you and a bipartisan bill led by my colleague senator Graham and co-sponsored by 20 senators Republican and Democrat would be a terrific next step miss Yeates we've established in the course of these questions that on December 27th and 29th former National Security Advisor general Flynn discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador so when the Trump transition team told The Washington Post in January 13th that sanctions were not discussed was that false I understand that there have been news reports to that account but I can't confirm whether in fact those conversations regarding sanctions occurred because that would require me to reveal classified information understood so I have a whole series of questions about things that would have been untrue without the case you're not going to be able to answer any of those not to the extent that it goes to general Flint's underlying conduct I can't address that well then let me move to that if I might sure On January 24th you just testified that National Security Advisor Flint was interviewed by the FBI about his underlying conduct and that that underlying conduct was problematic because it led to the conclusion the vice president was relying on falsehoods what was that underlying conduct and are you convinced that the former national security adviser was truthful in his testimony to the FBI in January 24 again I hate to frustrate you again but I think we're going to have to because my knowledge of his underlying conduct is based on classified information and so I can't reveal what that underlying conduct is it's why I had to do sort of an artificial description here of events without revealing that conduct I understand that on January 27th you just testified that you discussed with wite-out White House Counsel McGann four different topics and one of them included the possibility of criminal prosecution of the former national security advisor and what would the applicable statutes be what applicable statutes did you discuss and in your conclusion should the national security adviser face criminal prosecution senator Coons I'm going to strike out here because if I identify the statute then that would be insight into what the conduct was and look I'm not trying to be hyper technical here I'm trying to be really careful that I observe my responsibilities to protect classified information and so I can't identify the statute okay do you believe the administration took your warnings seriously when you made this extraordinary effort to go to the White House and in person briefed the White House Council on the 26th and 27th do you think they took appropriate steps with regards to general Flynn as the national security adviser given that he remained a frequent participant in very high-level national security matters for two weeks but certainly in the course of the meetings both on the 26 and 27 mr. McGann certainly demonstrated that he understood that this was serious so he did seem to be taking it seriously you know I don't have any way of knowing what if anything they did if nothing was done then certainly that would be concerning so you don't know whether they took any steps to restrict his access to classified information to investigate him further up and until the White The Washington Post published information that made it clear that he had been lying to the vice president no again I was gone after the 30th and so it's I wouldn't know if any steps had been communicated to the Department of Justice but I was not aware of any no had you not been summarily fired would you have recommended to the White House Counsel that they begin further investigations into the National Security Adviser or that they restrict his access to sensitive and classified information well it's a bit of a hypothetical head out remained at the Department of Justice and if I were under the impression that nothing had been done then yes I would have raised it again with the White House thank you miss age thank you mr. clay Shh dr. Klapper thank you both for you years of service to the American people mr. I want to start with you you declined to support to defend president Trump's executive order because you thought it was unconstitutional is that correct that's correct yes good um and you believe there was note that you believe that no reasonable argument could be made in this defense is that correct I don't know that I would put it in that in that way senator I visit was the analysis that we went through good let me stop you because I've got a whole bunch of questions okay um I just want to understand your thinking from my perspective sure did you believe then that there were reasonable arguments that could be made in its defense I believed that any argument that we would have to make in its defense would not be grounded in the truth because to make an argument in its defense we would have to argue that the executive order had nothing to do with religion that it was not done with an intent to discriminate against Muslims and based on a variety of you're looking at intent yes and I believe that that's the appropriate analysis and in fact that's been borne out in several Court decisions since that time that that's the appropriate analysis when you're doing a constitutional analysis to look to see what are you trying to accomplish here okay suppose instead of an executive order this had been an act of Congress would you have refused to defend it if it were the same act yes and in fact the Department of Justice has done that in the past for example with DOMA Rowe Defense of Marriage Act when the Department of Justice refused to defend DOMA but that was a political decision was it not well I wasn't at main justice at that time so I can't speak to that but that was another example of when DOJ did not defend the constitutionality of a statute in that sense but in your opinion the executive order is unconstitutional I certainly was not convinced that it was constitutional and given that I wasn't and the import of this I couldn't in good conscience send Department of Justice lawyers in to defend well I want to be sure I understand do you believe it was cut its constitutional unconstitutional I believed I was not convinced that it was constant - shil I believed that it was unconstitutional in the sense that I there was no way in the world I could send folks in there to argue something that that we didn't believe to be the truth so you believe it's unconstitutional okay I don't mean to wax - metaphase and if I can say I can understand why you might be a little frustrated with the language you're frustrated and happy as a clam no in here's here's the reason let me give you a little idea of the timetable - let me stop you cuz I don't have much time I got a lot of ground to cut okay um I don't mean to whack student metaphysical here but but at what point does an act of Congress or an executive order become unconstitutional well it all depends on what the Act does no but I mean at what point is it become I can look at the statutes I think that's unconstitutional does that make it unconstitutional I think the issue that we faced at the Department of Justice is to defend this executive order would require lawyers to go in and argue that this has nothing to do with religion so the point there's a statute or an executive order become unconstitutional is it some opry or I determination it become I tell me what I'm not telling you what I'm getting at not a minion disrespect who appointed you to the United States Supreme Court I was I was at that determine isn't it a court of final jurisdiction decides what's constitutionally not in fact aren't most acts of Congress presumed to be constitutional they are presumed but they're not always constitutional and now of course I was not on the Supreme Court and and I can tell you senator look we really wrestled over this decision I personally wrestled over this decision and it was not one that I took lightly at all but it was because I took my responsibilities seriously is that in the time believe me I believe you believe what you're saying yes I don't want to understand this is likely to come up in the future well at what point there's an executive order or statute become unconstitutional when I think it's unconstitutional or you think it's unconstitutional or quarter-final jurisdiction says it's unconstitutional I believe that it is the responsibility of the Attorney General if the president asked camera her to do something that he or she believes is unlawful or unconstitutional to say no and that's what I did okay I get it all right let me ask you both a couple questions can we boat can we agree a director and counselor that the Russians attempted to influence the outcome of the election yes sir absolutely yes did do you believe that the Russians did in fact influence the outcome of the election director in our intelligent assessment we made the point that we could not make that call we the intelligence community has neither the authority the expertise or the resources to make that judgment the only thing we said was there was we saw no evidence of influencing voter tallies in any of the 50 states but we were not in a position to judge whether actual outcome on the election how about you measure I don't know they entered at Sparta promised we'll never know okay have you ever heard the Russians have been doing this for years had they not I'm not minimizing what they did I think they did try to influence the election it's absolutely true they and as I pointed out as I mentioned in my opening statements or the they've been doing this since at least the 60s okay the difference however was this is unprecedented in terms of its aggressiveness and the most multifaceted campaign that they mounted that's new in here the fact that in 1968 the Kremlin actually serviced a which was part of the AGB attempted to subsidize the campaign of Hubert Humphrey I don't know the specifics of that I did want to research that but again at that certainly comports with what Russian tactics would be okay into the fact that in 1984 the Kremlin tried to to stop Ronald Reagan from being reelected um again I'd have to do some research to verify that but again it certainly comports with what they chose the candidate for whatever reason they had an aversion to they would do that ok um general clapper have you ever leaked information classified or unclassified to a member of the press ma not wittingly or knowingly as I said in my statement classified or unclassified well unclassified is not it's not leaking but unclassified uh that's that's not little enough that's somewhat of an on sir have you ever given information to a reporter that you didn't want to have your name connected with but you wanted to sit in the paper I have not I I've had many encounters with media over my career I'm sorry about that how about you miss Yeates no other than situations where the Department of Justice would arrange for example for me to talk on background with reporters about a particular issue to educate them about that now I've certainly never provided classified information and that would be the only kind of background different each do you know I've done the same thing but but certainly not that doesn't doesn't include sharing classified information do you know anybody else to justice who has ever leaked classified or unclassified information to to the press no jokes no okay Thank You mr. chairman I went over a pop okay sinal a thank you for sharing uh general clapper mushy it's good to see you again good to have you back here I shades I I remember so well your your confirmation that's like it won't I remember one Saturday sparing it on you tensely burying on your saying would you stand up to the President of the United States if you thought he was as you do something unlawful he's demanding under oath for you to say yes you would stand up and you told then Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama that's what you would do and appears to me that's that you've kept your word apparently it's okay to keep your word if depend upon who the administration is but I'm proud of you for keeping your word when the president tried to set a religious test for her entrance into this country's of the most first-year law students would say is unconstitutional you said you are going to oppose it I wish that mr. sessions and others and kept as consistent in this administration as they did in the last that's my editorial judgment now you wrote to the Justice Department I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right the president I'm not convinced that the defense of the executive orders consistent with these responsibilities now my convinced that executive order is lawful that an accurate statement of what you said yes it is senator hmm and you still feel that way today yes I did ah the White House claims that you betrayed the Department of Justice do you feel you betrayed the Department of Justice no senator I feel to have done anything else would have been a betrayal of my solemn obligation to represent the people and to uphold the law in the Constitution was the White House trying to tell the Justice Department how to carry out that executive order well I didn't have a lot of discussion with the White House about this exactly they I'm sorry said I don't entirely understand the question no but I mean did anybody on the White House try to direct the Justice Department how they should respond to that executive order well certainly there was discussion with the White House about litigation strategy but that occurred to my knowledge over the weekend but after the 30th when I issued my directive I was I was gone then that evening around nine o'clock so I don't know what other discussions after that well when I pause you for keeping your word - then senator sessions who apparently has a different standard as Attorney General FBI director Comey testified before this committee he was told why he appointed special counsel to investigate the Valerie Plame leak back in 2003 he was definitely terry in general attorney general Ashcroft has recused himself the several senior officials and trumpet campaign administration connected to this Russian investigation attorney general I was forced to recuse himself I do you think this is the kind of situation where we could should do what then Deputy Attorney General called me as Acting Attorney General did in the plane investigation and appoint a special counsel well senator I think that my successor rod Rosenstein has a big job ahead of him and I don't think I'm going to be giving him any advice from the cheap seats about how he needs to do it let me ask you this we know that about General Clinton's vulnerability to Russian blackmail Attorney General Sessions misled this committee about his contacts then had to change his testimony the president's son-in-law and senior advisor also reportedly failed to disclose current contacts on their security clearance forms do you have or did you have any concerns about the attorney general about mr. Koester or other trump officials vulnerability to blackmail this all of this information came to light after I was no longer with DOJ did you have concerns or why you were DDLJ that general Flynn might have been gone about to blackmail yes I did and express those to the White House and you say why you feel he may have been vulnerable to blackmail and if somebody else fell into that same category might they'd be vulnerable to blackmail well certainly anytime the Russians have compromising information on you then you are certainly vulnerable to blackmail let me ask general clapper this you've looked at a lot of these the other cases senior government officials that they have hidden financial information things that normally disclose was it taken senior official position is that an area where they could be blackmailed because if it's discovered oh yes it is of course and is it your experience that the Russians search for that kind of thing absolutely January the intelligence community the FBI CIA NSA concluded high confidence of Russia interfered in the 2016 election to denigrate Secretary Clinton helped elect Donald Trump last week President Trump could contradict that consensus he said well it could have been China could be a lot of different groups you feel Russia was responsible absolutely regrettably certainly he although the conclusions that we rendered were the same as in the highly classified report as in the unclassified unfortunately the lot of the substantiation for that could not be put in the unclassified report because of the sensitivity of it to me the evidence was overwhelming and very compelling that the Russians were the did this does it serve any purpose for high officials like the President to say well it could have been somebody else it could have been China even does that really does that help us or does that help Russia well I guess it could be you could you could rationalize that that helps the Russians by obfuscating who was actually responsible thank you thank you very much general thank you mushy it's good to have you both here Center Frank Thank You mr. chairman I want to thank both you and the ranking member for for the this hearing these hearings and I want to thank general clapper and Attorney General Yates for for appearing today we have the intelligence communities have concluded all 17 of them that Russia interfere with this election and we all know how is that's right similar as I pointed out in my statement senator Franken was there were only three agencies that directly involved in this assessment plus my own at all 17 signed on to that well we didn't go through that that process this was a special situation because of the time limits and my that what I need to be to who could really contribute to this and the sensitivity of the information we decided was a conscious judgment to restrict it to those three I'm not aware of anyone who dissented or disagreed when it came out okay and I think anyone has looked at even the unclassified reporters pretty convinced that this is what happened and one of the questions is why they favor Donald Trump there are a number of contacts and communications that between Trump campaign officials and associates members of the Trump administration Jeff Sessions as Senator Leahy mentioned Carter page a former campaign advisor Paul Manafort it was a former campaign manager and chief strategist Rex Tillerson Secretary of State a friend of Russia award Roger stone and of course the Jared Kushner White House senior advisor son-in-law and Michael Flynn all this that's a lot in my mind now going to Flynn he appeared during the campaign on Russia today Russia today is the propaganda arm one of the propagandas arm of a now you generals since you've retired have you appeared on Russia today no not wittingly no okay and and general Flynn received $37,000 for sitting next to Putin at the 10th anniversary of Russia today it seems all this seems very odd to me and raise a lot of questions I was struck that mr. McGann did not ask you in the second meeting why do jabe general Yates would have concerns that the deal that being a national security adviser had lied to the vice president in the first meeting did you mention that that that was that he might be compromised certainly we went through all of our concerns in the first meeting and it was in the second meeting that he just raised the question of essentially why is this an issue for the Department of Justice if one White House official lies to another okay I don't understand why he didn't understand that I'm not sure I can help you with that today uh this is general Flynn after that for 18 days stayed there and was in one classified thing after another there are policies to deal with who gets clearance security clearance and not executive order 12 9 6 8 outlines of rules for security clearances and it says that when there is a credible allegation that raises concern about someone's fitness to access classified information that person's cleaner should be suspended pending investigations all right the executive also order also states that clearance holders must always demonstrate quote trustworthiness honesty reliability discretion and sound judgment as well as freedom from allegiances and potential for coercion is that right and yet the White House Counsel did not understand why the Department of Justice was concerned well to be fair to mr. McGann I think the issue that he raised he wasn't clear on was why we cared that Michael Flynn had lied to the vice president and others why that was a matter that's clear within DOJ jurisdiction so clear yeah I can't and the President had told the President Obama had told the incoming president elect the two days after the election don't hire this guy I don't know anything about that so that well that's what we've heard and we have McGann doesn't understand what's wrong with this and then we have Spicer the press secretary saying the president was told about this the president was told about this in late January according to the press secretary so now he's got a guy who has been the the former president said don't hire this guy he's clearly compromised he's lied to the vice president and he keeps him on and he lets him be in all these classified funk all the uh he lets him talk with Putin President of the United States and the national security adviser sit in the Oval Office and and and discuss this with Putin is it possible that the reason that he didn't fire him then was that well if I fire him for talking to the Russians about sanctions and if I fire what about all the other people on my team who coordinated I mean isn't it possible that the reason cuz he asked yourself why wouldn't you fire a guy who did this and all I can think of is that he would say well we've got all these other people in the administration who've had contacts we have all these other people in the administration who coordinated who were talking maybe that I'm just trying to put up we're trying to put a puzzle together here everybody and maybe just maybe he didn't get rid of a guy who lied to the vice president who got paid by the Russians who went on Russia today because there are other people in his administration who met secretly with the Russians and didn't reveal it till later until they were caught that may be why it took him 18 days until came public to get rid of Mike Flynn it was a danger to this Republic care to comment I know I don't think I'm gonna touch that senator Blumenthal uh Thank You mr. chairman and I want to thank you senator Graham and Senator Whitehouse for conducting this hearing in a very bipartisan way and for prioritizing this issue which is a such gravity to our democracy I want to thank each of you not only for your long and distinguished service but also for the conscience and conviction that you have brought to your jobs whether we agree or disagree with you at three P I hope that there are young prosecutors around the country and young members of our intelligence committee who will watch this hearing and say that's the kind of professional I want to be not just expert but also people of deep conviction and conscience and I agree with my colleagues that there ought to be an independent commission that can have public hearings produce recommendations and a report but I also believe that there has to be a special prosecutor because what I hear from people in Connecticut and from my colleagues in their town halls and meetings is that people want the truth uncovered about how the Russians sought to interfere and undermine our democracy and our electoral system and they also want accountability they want not only the Russians to pay a price they want anybody who colluded with the Russians or aided and abetted them to pay a price as well and there are criminal statutes that prohibit that kind of collusion and impose serious criminal fines and imprisonment for people who might have done that and we know that the FBI is now investigating the potential collusion of Trump Associates and Trump campaign and administration officials with the Russians as director Comey has told us and made public so there's no classified information there the meeting that the FBI conducted on January 24th preceded by one day approximately your first meeting with Donald Magan isn't a fact that Michael Flynn lied to the FBI and and I can't reveal the internal FBI investigation senator even though it's not even though that part would not technically be classified it's an ongoing investigation and I can't reveal that did you tell Donald McGann that then National Security Advisor Flynn told the truth to the FBI no he asked me how he had done in the interview and I specifically declined to answer that because it was part of an investigation that's right was that intended to indicate to him that Michael Flynn had a problem in that interview no I was intending to enter to to let him know that Michael Flynn had a problem on a lot of levels but it wasn't necessarily in with respect to how he performed in the interview I was intentionally not letting him know how the interview had gone and lying to the FBI is a crime correct it is yes violation of 18 United States Code 1001 that's right and it's punishable by five years in prison yes it is so if Michael Flynn lied to the FBI he had a ton of legal trouble facing him he could face criminal prosecution if he lied to the FBI yes and if he became a foreign agent for another country for Turkey which he was the foreign agent for without getting permission from the Department of Defense he faced criminal penalties for that and still faces them correct yes it's certainly fair of violations can't be criminally prosecuted yes in fact it's a violation of 18 United States Code to 2:19 and that's punishable by two years in prison correct and his failure to disclose payments from foreign sources which also he had done before you went to Donal McGann is also criminally punishable is it not that was not a topic I discussed with mr. McGann and so not something I can discuss here today but it is in fact from your knowledge of violation of criminal laws or not to not disclose payments from foreign yes but I'm not I'm not speaking to his specific conduct just generally that it is yes if Michael Flynn is prosecuted for any of these crimes isn't it possible that the Vice President United States might be a witness I guess it would depend on the crime if it were a false statement to the FBI about his conversations with the Russians wouldn't the Vice President potentially be called as a witness to corroborate that false statement you know I would be certainly that's possible but I'd be speculating how such criminal prosecution would come together so where I'm going is the need for a special prosecutor is because officials at the highest level who are responsible for appointing the Deputy Attorney General the United States Attorney General are all potentially witnesses and they are even targets correct potentially and so a special counsel in order to hold those government officials or others responsible really has to be independent correct well Department of Justice lawyers pride themselves and being able to be independent regardless of whether they're appointed as a special counsel but the ultimate decision whether or not to prosecute the sake of appearance as well as in reality should be made by someone who is unquestionably independent objective and impartial sooner I absolutely understand your concerns here but the fact of the matter is is that particularly as someone who just departed from the Department of Justice I'm just not going to wait into whether or not they should have a special counsel or an independent counsel in this matter I don't I don't really think they need the former's I'm telling them how to do their jobs well I'm gonna be very unfair to you and just ask you as a private citizen wouldn't you like to see a special counsel appointed under these circumstances not gonna go there either senator as an expert witness committee I'll qualify you as an expert Graham allows me to do it uh let me we'll have to bear huh let me just close by asking you my colleague senator Franken made reference to warnings given to the Oh given by President Obama to then president-elect Trump about hiring Michael Flynn that is a public report from the New York Times in fact of today which I asked be entered into the record and I also ask and be entered in the record the February 9th report from The Washington Post I believe there's been a reference to it without that published report and without the Free Press telling us a lot of what went on Michael Flynn might still be sitting in the White House as national security adviser because by January 30th you were forced to resign correct you were fired yes I was fired so nobody was around to tell the White House as you said that our national security was in danger well there were still two career officials in the National Security Division who had been working with me on this matter that were there and were certainly conversant in the facts but the ultimate decision to go to the White House was yours yes it was Thank You mr. Joffe senator Otto Thank You mr. chairman in spite of the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to convince all of us that there's nothing to see here with regard to Russian interference with our 2016 election and Trump teams connections to these efforts we need to get to the bottom of this and so I thank chairman and ranking member Whitehouse for these hearings in fact I just had a number of town hall meetings in Hawaii this past weekend and hundreds of people came and believe me they care that we get to the bottom of this the Trump administration blames President Obama for failing to suspend general Flint's clearance and in fact in a press conference today Sean Spicer said quote everyone in the government goes through the same process and quote he also said quote there's no difference of a security clearance once it's issued in quote and basically as far as this administration administration is concerned nothing more needed to be done by them regarding general Flint's clearance director clapper isn't it true that the CIA has a separate vetting process for National Security Council appointees and in fact the press is reporting today that Jena Flynn never completed that process can you enlighten us I can't speak to specifics of how it was done with general Clinton I know what what I went through as a political appointee twice and two in a Republican and Democratic administration and the vetting process for either a political appointee or someone working in the White House is far far more invasive and far far more thorough than a standard TSS CI clearance process but I don't know what process was used in in general clinch case and nor did I have access to his complete investigatory file so it's very difficult for me to speculate on what was in it and what action if any was taken by the White House well according to Sean Spicer that he had a clearance from the Obama administration and that was it and this administration had no further responsibilities so let me go on others of my colleagues have mentioned and you yourself mr. clapper said that our tea is a Russian mouthpiece to spread propaganda and of course we know that general Flynn attended a gala hosted by or tenth anniversary gala for our tea in December 2015 where he said sat next to President Putin and got paid over $33,000 for that mr. cupboard given the information that misdeeds provided to the White House regarding and this is during the January 26 and 27 time frame regarding general Flynn should he have sat in on the following discussions on January 28 he participated in an hour-long call along with President Trump to President Putin and on February 11th he participated in a discussion with Prime Minister obby and the president amar Lago to discuss North Korea's missile tests should he given the information that had already been provided by message should he have participated in these two very specific instances well you know I can't that's difficult for me to answer because I'm not I was out at night so again it's just a standard comment a general comment I I don't think it was a I don't think it's a good practice does it that way so I think this comports with some of the concerns that have been raised about the appropriateness or adequacy of the Trump administration's bidding process with regard to various disclosures by other members of his administration and as I mentioned the administration's continuing efforts to downplay Russia's interference in our elections after a general Flynn resigned in February 13th On February 15th President Trump tweeted that Flynn is a quote wonderful man and quote is very very unfair what happened to general Flynn I quote so mr. clapper is this the kind of statement that would be made by isn't aware of serious security concerns about his former national security adviser well I am loathe to comment on the tweets I you know that's that was I suppose honest expression how he felt well does it sound like somebody who knew that there were serious security concerns about it that he would say it's very very unfair and that that mr. Flynn is a wonderful man maybe I should just well I don't know people can draw their own conclusions I I don't know what information was that conveyed to the president I had no insight there so I don't know who to the extent to which he had an understanding what the former attorney I think attorneys general conveyed I don't know how much that made its way the president yes precisely that that is a concern that I would have that it sounds like perhaps the president was not aware and in fact going on in March the president tweeted that Flint should be given immunity flemm resigned in February 13 and that the FBI's investigation is quote a witch-hunt so I'd like to ask both of you should these tweets these kinds of tweets and other similar assertions by the president have any influence at all on the FBI's ongoing investigation into Russian interference in our elections and team Trump's connections to these efforts well it shouldn't and I'm confident and won't I hope so I have a question about the foreign agents Registration Act violations Farah a number of term administration officials are belatedly disclosing and registering their work on behalf of foreign governments under the foreign agents Registration Act some of it raised serious counterintelligence concerns I asked her to call me about these concerns last week ms lee yates what are the consequences for White House staffers who revealed to disclose their foreign contacts on their security clearance forms well there can be a variety of ramifications you can lose your security clearance you can lose your job or in certain circumstances you can be criminally prosecuted is it up to the Department of Justice or the FBI to pursue these kinds of allegations against staffers who do not disclose appropriately again it would all depend on the circumstances of the non-disclosure whether it was willful and what the circumstances were of the conduct underlying that so it would really it's going to be very fact-specific I agree that it should be fact-specific by considering the allegations I hope that either the FBI or the Department of Justice is pursuing an investigation into these matters again under what circumstances with the Department of Justice decide to bring charges against someone for violating far so you said the CIA would depend on the facts of the situation if the President or someone close to him knew that a White House official failed to disclose a work on behalf of a foreign government and chose to cover that up again can you really read again the possible repercussions to this person to the individual individual again let's say that the allegations are proven true that they fail to disclose their activity and that the president covered it up or the individual did they see them whom sent you or the administration you and then the individual also covered it up oh well cover-ups are bad that usually is evidence of intent and so that's something that we look at and making determinations about whether it's something there should be criminally prosecuted but again you know it's going to be very fact-specific it's hard to give you a you know hard fast answers and if the administration there knew I should have known I'm sorry okay thank you very much second up we're going to do a second round but we're going to do it quickly and we're gonna do four minute rounds and there's light at the end of the tunnel we got to vote at 5:30 so I promise you you're gonna get out of here pretty quick but I know senators have questions starting with me and I'm going to enforce the for four minutes to myself up general clapper during your investigation of all things Russia did you ever find a situation where a Trump business interest in Russia gave you concern not in the course of the preparation of the intelligence community assessment since I'm sorry at all any time um [Music] senator Graham I can't comment on that because that impacts investigation it wasn't enough to put into the report that's correct okay miss Shay's the rule of law you cannot allow people to leak classified information because they want a particular outcome that's not the rule of law is that correct absolutely and I think you both agree with that concept yes did mr. McCain in your view miss eighths Yates asked reasonable questions about your concerns I didn't really have a judgment about whether they were reasonable or unreasonable but I do think that mr. McGann was trying to get to the bottom in our discussions of what had happened with general and they wanted to actually see the information that you were talking about he indicated he did again I don't have any way of knowing what happened but he said he wanted to and you tried to set that up that's right okay now about surveillance this is very important an American citizen cannot be surveilled in the United States for colluding with a foreign government unless you have a warrant is that a true statement of the law that's right is it fair to say that incidental collection occurs even in the United States that's correct as well yes okay so there's two situations that we would have found out what General Flynn said to the Russian ambassador if there was a FISA warrant focused on him was there was asking yes either one of you again I think you know I'm not going to answer whether there was a FISA warrant nor am I even gonna talk about whether general Flynn was talking to the Russians okay well I have to obviously I'm gonna go on with him well if you wasn't talking to the Russians we've had a hearing for no good reason so clearly he's talking to the Russians and we know about it so if there is no FISA warrant I will find out about this by the way the other way that we know what he was talking about the Russian if he was gently surveilled so those are the two options do we know who unmasked the conversation between the Russian ambassador and general Flint was there I'm asking in this situation are you looking at me yes sir I don't know do you miss Yates I can't speak to this specific situation but can I try to clarify one point on this unmasking thing very quickly okay I'll try to do it quickly as a consumer of intelligence I would for example I would receive intelligence reports from various hig SF no no oftentimes the names are already unmasked by the intelligence agents above the bottom line here is I want to know how it got to the Washington Post somebody had to have access to the information and they gave it to the Washington Post is that a fair statement that's right that's what it looks like to me as I write general clapper yeah and it was neither one of you did it that's right that's right how many people can request unmasking of American citizen in our government general clapper how many I don't have an exact number it's uh I think fairly limited because it's normally fairly high level officials how did you know that general Flynn was talking to the Russians who told you and I can't reveal that in an open setting but what I was trying to say was is that often times we receive intelligence reports where the name of the American citizen is already unmasked and its unmasked by the Intel agency because not based on anybody's request but because the name of that citizen is essential situation here I can't you senator I can't make your mouth this messes up thank you both but I want to know the answer to these questions uh senator Whitehouse thanks again chairman at two things one there are multiple levels of security clearances and they're issued by different agencies correct so having one from DoD doesn't necessarily make you good for all positions in all places it does not and indeed DoD operates clearances at multiple levels correct right but I think the key point here is that as I indicated earlier the requirements for a TSS CI verses requirements for occupying a sense of position in the White House as a part of the National Security Council or way higher than directly in middle and as I can attest much more invasive and aggressive than a standard tsse I now in terms of compromised tradecraft if you have somebody and you have them compromised it's pretty standard compromised tradecraft to ask them to do some little thing for you under the threat of having the compromising information disclosed and if you succeed you now have two things on them and you work it that way to get somebody more and more enmeshed in compromise until they're more or less owned by the Intelligence Agency is that a fair description of how you can develop compromised regulated cratis okay just want to make that sure because we're talking a lot about it here outlasting my list so I went through the list looked at like propaganda fake news trolls and BOTS we can all agree from the IC report that those were in fact used in the 2016 election hacking and theft of political information the hack into the DNC and into the Podesta mails I think we can all agree that that's a yes timed leaks of damaging material that appears very strongly to be a yes because of the timing of the release smack after the Access Hollywood release I believe that the answers were correct know as to in country assassination and political violence by the Russians here in the United States would you both agree with that I don't think we turned up any evidence of that okay and controlling investment in key economic sectors for leverage it seems that our economy is probably a little too big for that and there was no evidence of that in the IC report either correct that's correct so the question of shady business and financial ties that not only start out as bribery perhaps or as highly favorable deals secret deals with Russians but that in turn can then turn into compromise and good it's not just the carrot of I'm continuing to bribe you at some point you have a stick over the individual of I'm going to out the deal that we have unless you do this correct that's a classic compliment and we do not yet know the extent to its bat has played a role in the 2016 Russian election hat correct I don't and in terms of corrupting and compromising politicians same we don't know the full extent of whether or not politicians have been corrupted or I sort of don't I did not and don't so if we were to go down this yes yes yes no no question mark question mark would be our our tally at the end we agreed on that yes okay anything else with Yates not for me sir terrific thank you you'll back my nine seconds your trendsetter Sen Grassley mr. clapper um you said yes when I asked you if you ever unmasked a trump associate or a member of Congress but I forgot to ask which was it was it a Trump associate a member of Congress or both over my time is DNI but I think the answer was on rare occasion both okay and again senator just just to make the point here my focus was on the foreign target and at the foreign targets behavior in relation to the u.s. person okay how many instances were there or was there just one I can only recall one could you provide but it could have been more and and and the best accounting of this would be stuff we didn't know in accordance with a procedure the collecting agency yeah and that would be a better source of records in the top of my head okay could you provide us more details in a classified setting I could okay vitiates the same question well you said I don't know what you said to answer my question about if you were involved in any on masking were you involved no I've never asked anyone to be unmasked okay uh senator Gramm both you and I and maybe other people have been said that we need a classified setting to get some answers here I assume you're going to pursue that yes sir okay let's see I got time for a couple more questions I believe we regardless of any disagreements that we have about allegations of collusion the fact that Russia tried to meddle in all of in our democracy is obviously an affront to all Americans we have to punish Russia and we have to deter all nations from these shenanigans do you to believe that the government's response so far has been enough to deter future attacks of this kind and if not what else would you think we should be doing miss Yeates would you start out please I think they're coming back senator and I think that we have to do a whole lot more both to harden our election systems our state election systems to ensure that folks out there know when they're looking at news feeds that it may not be real news that they're reading I think that we have to do more to deter the Russians and it wouldn't hurt to prosecute a few folks but I don't think we should kid ourselves that we'll be able to prosecute our way out of this problem okay mr. clapper well as much as I love congressional hearings I think there is a useful purpose sir because I think the most important thing that needs to be done here is to educate the electorate as to what the Russians objective is and the tactics and techniques and procedures that they have have employed and will continue to employ and a nice I predict it will be against all parties and so I think education of the public is the most important thing we can do in this hearing grudgingly though I admit it serves that purpose to the extent that this can be shared openly so you think as well there needs to be more done in a way of sanctions to the Russians or any other government that attempts to interfere in our election process mister I'm done sounds sarin Klobuchar okay thank you and we thank you both for being here again I think Senator Graham then asked if you would want to come back then director clapper and we were very glad that you're here so when I ask my questions before I asked about this general fact if a high-ranking national security official is caught on tape with a foreign official saying one thing in private and then says something in public that's different and if that's material for blackmail and you both said that it was could you give me some examples just from your experience director clapper of when Russians have used for one a better word Sex Lies and videotape against people as blackmail I don't have a lot of direct knowledge external to Russia this is a classical technique that going back to Soviet era that they would use to co-opt compromised political opponents and of course you know the current administration the Russia's a lot even more aggressive than that where they just blot out people for being opposition so there there are examples of that I don't have month top my head but I have read and seen it particularly doing during the Soviet era internal to the Soviet Union that this is a common practice what about our election infrastructure as we move forward as you said one major thing we need to do is to educate the public and I'm very concerned while we have different states have different election equipment I'm the ranking on rules and we're working on a bill on this how important is that to protect the integrity of our election it's quite important and speaking now as a private citizen not my former capacity I do think that our election apparatus should be considered critical infrastructure and should have the protections that are attended to that a lot of states pushed back when jeh Johnson Secretary of Homeland Security engaged with state election officials about having that designation and having the federal government interfere in in their election process but as a citizen I'd be concerned with doing all we can to secure that apparatus a part of the attended to the intelligence community assessment that we put out DHS put out a paper on best practices for as an advisory on how to secure election apparatus in a state and local level very good do you think we're doing a good enough job now back to the propaganda issue in educating our citizens about this no we're not and the other thing we don't do well enough is a counter messaging and how would you suggest we could improve that I would be for I've been an advocate for a USIA on steroids I felt that way in terms of countering the message from Isis who is very sophisticated at conveying messages and proselytizing and recruiting people and our our efforts to counter message are are too fragmented in my in my own opinion that's all I'm saying here and I would I would seriously consider the notion of as I say aus IO and steroid I don't exactly I'm sorry what would that mean exactly well someone that we could we could message or counter message and and our efforts to counter violent extremist ideology particularly that from Isis who are very skilled at this and we I don't think we do as a nation we do a good enough job I think counter-messaging the Russians given him some of their own medicine much more aggressively than we've done now I and I would hasten to add that is should not be tagged on to the intelligence community it needs to be a separate entity from from the intelligence community something I see would support but should be separate from that mr. chair does one last question miss eight you brought a lawyer with you a career lawyer right to the meeting at the White House that right about when you were giving these warnings about the knowledge you had on general Flynn is that normal practice why did you do that well this was a person who was the career lawyer who was supervising this matter and we thought that it was important first of all she had been the one who was most intimately familiar with it but secondly we knew that my tenure was going to be short and wanted to make sure that there was continuity there and that they just didn't know is going to be that short I didn't know okay yeah thank you I think the vote is on so I hate to change let's do three minutes I can be let me be very quick yes sir mr. clapper just mr. Putin have any assets in the United States I don't know the answer the question who would know that um well a some component in the ATO's community might know it or the FBI but I don't know do you know if any and mr. Putin's friends might have assets in the United States that are being held for mr. Putin that's possibility yes who would know that same person I'm sorry who would know that same person I would guess the FBI okay um if the intelligence community and the Attorney General knew all this information about mr. Flynn how did he get a security clearance new what about to Flint well that he had a conversation with the Russian ambassador about sanctions well that was late that was the 29th of December or so whatever that whatever that has reported in the media when that took place January 19th I think the president was sworn in 17 something like that how did he get a security clearance well he had a security clearance and had one for a long time he's a career military intelligence officer I don't know the specifics of when his when his felt do it the system is every 5 years you get the current system every 5 years you're supposed to get a periodic reinvestigation and I don't know of the details of that it would probably be done by his old agency the Defense Intelligence Agency but don't you have to get some additional double secret security clearance to serve in the White House well yes you do and no as I indicated before can I ask you how the process is done is I don't know how it's done in this administration okay but my own knowledge of how it was done in when I served in the Bush administration and again in the Obama administration there is an extensive vetting process by the FBI okay let me stop because I've only got 50 seconds misshapes were are there any reasonable arguments that can be made in defense of president Trump's executive order I don't believe that there are reasonable legal arguments that are grounded in truth they can be made in defense of his argument that the travel ban was not intended to have an impact a religious impact in to disfavor Muslims so you believe that the arguments made by the lawyers who are who are now defending the executive order are unreasonable I believe that the Department of Justice has a responsibility to uphold the law and to always speak truth particularly when it's about something as fundamental as this executive order was that deals with religious freedom but let me say this I have tremendous respect for the career men and women of the Department of Justice including the lawyers in the Civil Division who are handling this but their obligation was different than mine they must make an argument if they can make a reasonable legal argument as acting Attorney General my responsibility was broader than that and I had to look beyond the confines of the face of the EO to look at the president's statements and to look at other factors to determine what was the actual intent here and that's that was the basis for my decision for the record different travel ban yeah there's a the first order was withdrawn there's a second one out there senator Blumenthal thanks mr. chairman a Miss yet so far the concerns you expressed about the constitutionality of these executive orders have been upheld by the courts correct that's right a second director clapper on the issue of possible use of the far right websites by the Russians you were asked earlier whether you have any knowledge about that potential cooperation or involvement do you have independent knowledge of the use of those far-right websites I don't I don't have a least off top my head specific knowledge or insight into that connection could have been I just I just don't know that directly but you made reference to published reports you said I think you knew about it from what you read in the newspapers well that's a specific reference to what happened in curtain France correct and the same tactics that were used most recently in France we're also used or at least reportedly used in this country correct and I'd like to put in the record one public report there probably others a McClatchy report of March 20th which begins with the lead federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories some fictional it favored Donald Trump's presidential bid it quotes two people familiar with the inquiry and it goes on to mention as among those sites Breitbart news and info wars if mr. chairman if thought this report could be entered in the record do you have knowledge miss of that federal investigation I I don't and if I did I couldn't tell you about it I thought that might be right finally you said Missy eighths that we're not going to prosecute our way out of the Russian continued attack on this country but putting Americans in prison if they cooperate collude aid and abet or otherwise assist in that illegality might send a very strong deterrent message correct I expect that it would yes and there are indeed criminal penalties existing on the books we don't need new laws which involve criminality and potential criminal prosecution for those acts correct yes that's right thank you very much mr. chairman thank you all where we're at the end of the day and you've been great I think the public is better educated at least I hope about what Russia did seems to be bipartisan consensus that Russia tried to interfere with our election we have some differences in other places but just from some housekeeping here you will provide with a to of the committee if you could mr. clapper I know you're a private citizen now but if you could help us determine the the pool of people that can request unmasking would appreciate it in some later date when it comes to incident on collection on 2016 campaigns I'm a little confused but I think we found at least one occasion where that did happen you made a request for unmasking on a trump associate and maybe a member of Congress sir is that right mr. clapper prompted yes okay do we know of any others off the top of your head of any the candidate on either side the ow oh I don't there could have been other requests unmasking requests that I did but there's a way to find that out yes okay good and the best way to do it would be to the original collection agent I you provide all requested what uh finally the current Deputy Attorney General Dino initiates do you have confidence in him yes I do uh thank you all uh final comment absolutely during the last hearing we had the author of the Kremlin playbook as one of our witnesses and we had the very well-regarded Kenneth Wayne seen as one of our witnesses and they both agreed that the United States is leaving itself vulnerable to this kind of influence if we continue to allow shell corporations to proliferate without a way for law enforcement to figure out who the beneficial owners are so I mention that because chairman Grassley and I are working on a piece of legislation to help solve that but I think it's very important in this area and I just wanted to flag it and express to chairman Grassley my appreciation for his bipartisan cooperation on that front and of course my appreciation to chairman Graham for his work to make this hearing a success and so interesting and meaningful thank you thank you both hearings adjourned

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 336,086

Rating: 4.4097037 out of 5

Keywords: The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting, yates, sally yates, sally yates testimony, michael flynn, nsa, donald trump, president trump, trump

Id: tuPTvi-WP18

Length: 191min 4sec (11464 seconds)

Published: Mon May 08 2017