Clapper accused of leaking dossier and lying about it

Sean Davis:

Buried within a newly declassified congressional report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections is a shocking revelation: former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper not only leaked information about the infamous Steele dossier and high-level government briefings about it to CNN, he also may have lied to Congress about the matter.

In one of the findings within the 253-page report, the House intelligence committee wrote that Clapper leaked details of a dossier briefing given to then-President-elect Donald Trump to CNN’s Jake Tapper, lied to Congress about the leak, and was rewarded with a CNN contract a few months later.

“Clapper flatly denied ‘discussing[ing] the dossier [compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists,'” the committee found.

When asked directly whether he had ever discussed the dossier with any journalists, Clapper replied that he had not, according to a transcript of the proceedings:

MR. ROONEY: Did you discuss the dossier or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists?

MR. CLAPPER: No.

The former DNI later changed his story after he was confronted specifically about his communications with Jake Tapper of CNN.

“Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic,” the report continued. “Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in early January 2017, around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump, on ‘the Christopher Steele information,’ a two-page summary of which was ‘enclosed in’ the highly-classified version of the ICA,” or intelligence community assessment.

The briefing of Trump by U.S. intelligence chiefs was held on January 6. CNN published its story on the briefing, based on anonymous leaks from “two national security officials,” on January 10. BuzzFeed published the full dossier, which was jointly funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, minutes after the CNN story was published.
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As The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway noted after Comey’s memos were finally made available to the public, the fired FBI director’s account of the briefing of Trump suggested that the entire briefing was a setup from the beginning, and that it was scheduled and held just so it could be leaked to journalists who wanted an excuse to publish a dossier nobody had verified.
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It would not surprise me to find that Brennan was also talking about the dirty dossier.  He is reported to have briefed Harry Reid about the dossier and Reid subsequently pushed for an FBI investigation since Brennan was not supposed to deal with domestic issues.  It looks like both Brennan and Clapper were pushing the story that turned into a coup attempt against the Presient.