Former President Obama’s intelligence chief on Monday said he hoped special counsel Robert Mueller would wrap up his Russia investigation soon and tell the country whether there was any collusion between Moscow and President Trump’s campaign.
“I think the overarching point here is that this whole issue has to come to a resolution,” Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in an interview with Hill.TV’s new morning show, “Rising.”
“At some point special counsel Mueller and his team I hope will wrap up the investigation and clear the air one way or the other whether or not there was collusion with the Russians,” he added. “This is a cloud that is hanging over the country and certainly hanging over this presidency. And I do hope that happens, and soon.”
Clapper also addressed last week’s Justice Department inspector general report, saying anti-Trump text messages between FBI agents were “not good, particularly using a government issued device,”
But he said he has not seen evidence yet that those opinions affected the outcome of the Clinton email or Trump-Russia probes. “But the actual impact on the investigation, I don’t see much of that,” he said.
With new reports that government officials have been using private email accounts, Clapper said his practice when he was director of national intelligence was to let his private email “go dormant” and to forward any government business accidentally sent to it to his official account.
And Clapper said the weekend reports that Trump’s friend Roger Stone had a contact with a Russian figure during the election was just more evidence of “these frequent meetings between members of the Trump camp and the Russians.”
To watch the entire Clapper interview, go to http://hill.tv/rising.
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