James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence during the Obama administration, fired back at President Donald Trump's harsh rebuke Tuesday of former intelligence community officials, calling the president's allegation they were undermining him "absurd."
In remarks on CNN's "The Situation Room," Clapper defended the officials after Trump, in a CBS Evening News interview, lashed out at Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former National Security Adviser Michael Hayden, and ex-FBI Director James Comey for their outspoken criticism.
"The only reason we've spoken out about all of this is our genuine concerns about this president and this presidency, and who is assaulting values and institutions and standards of this country, which collectively we've spent decades defending," Clapper said.
"It's an absurd allegation," he added. "There's no basis or evidence of that. Our concern — now I'm speaking specifically, Jim Comey and John Brennan and Mike Rogers as well — . . . is [what] the Russians were doing to interfere in our political processes . . . and there was no attempt to undermine president-elect and later President Trump.”
He also mocked Trump's description of a "beautiful letter" Clapper sent to the then-president-elect.
"It was a note that accompanied the first daily briefing he received after he became president-elect," Clapper said. "One of the things that I made a point of in that letter was to join him or ask him to abide by, support, and protect the principle of truth to power, which [current DNI] Dan Coats, to his great credit, is doing."
And he angrily reacted to Trump's "ambiguous" statement Tuesday he does, in fact, believe the intelligence community's findings Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
"To Dan Coats' great credit, I think his forthright statement about the threat that Russia poses to this country sort of, I think, helped force [Trump] to at least grudgingly or reluctantly agree," he said.
"Although as he did when he read his statement . . . he does his ad lib, 'it could have been others.' No, it wasn't others. It was the Russians. Nobody else. It wasn't the Chinese, a guy in New Jersey. It was the Russians, and the president is always ambiguous about that."
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