James Clapper

I would very much like to see what Mueller actually said in his report and hopefully answer some of the unanswered questions that I think still linger that the three and a half page summary that the attorney general provided, which was…

I do have concerns about the President's unwillingness or inability or whatever to call out the Russian interference in the election.

I don't know whether it's a case of intimidation or gullibility or combination thereof. I don't understand it, this deference, particularly to dictators. And that too is dangerous over time.

To his credit, and he walked away from it. And that's, you know, as you eluded, no deal is better than a bad deal.

It's unprecedented. I've never heard of it -- a case of it. May have been, I just know about it, but in my 50 years in intelligence, never heard of such a case where the President got personally involved in somebody's clearance.

I would argue that, you know, if the FBI didn't at least think about, you know, the connection of the Trump campaign or the President himself with the Russians, you know, they'd almost be -- they could be open to criticism for not looking…

The 25th Amendment, though, and I think appropriately so, has a very high bar to invoke.

I think the purpose there is to trivialize these concerns.

If there was, in fact, a financial interest or hope for a financial interest, that could potentially have, I think, serious counterintelligence and national security implications.

When you just take a step back and look at the fact that the president of the United States had to deny that he's a Russian asset today on the lawn of the White House, that's incredible.

I feel that way. Given the track record, the behavior of then-candidate Trump and then President Trump and then the firing of Jim Comey and then the acknowledgment on television publicly that he did it because the investigation into the…

I never thought that the president's legal team once he got one in place would ever agree to his speaking directly to the Mueller investigation team.

The truth is every time this president opens his mouth, and I don't say this sort of lackadaisically, it's very likely he'll say something that is not true.

My dashboard warning light was clearly on. And I think that was the case with all of us in the intelligence committee.

The first objective of the Russians was to sow doubt, discord and discontent in this country and they have succeeded to a fairly well capitalizing and exploiting the polarization and divisiveness in this country.

The general assault on truth and those institutions that depend on truth... is dangerous to any democracy, particularly this one.

This is just an opportunity to drive a wedge among us. Again, to sow doubt, discord and discontent about the advocacy of our institutions, about the rule of law.

I would certainly want to listen to the tape, not for voyeuristic purposes, but as important as this incident was, it seems to me if you were really insidiously pursuing every scrap of information, every morsel of data that would cast…

I think anytime there's an event like this that has huge implications, you know, for the relationship, and as heavily dependent on intelligence for our insight into what happened, there should be a senior, either Gina Haspel and/or Dan…

I would hope, maybe I'm fantasizing here, that the royal family would think about some other heir apparent for the king other than Mohammed bin Salman because for my money, and I think for lots of other people, he has severely compromised…

The President as we've seen over the last couple of years, those have a -- what I'll call -- what I'll characterize as an elastic evidentiary bar.

I think we need Saudi Arabia as an ally. Now that -- right now, I guess the administration view is that Saudi Arabia is synonymous with Mohammed bin Salman.

And it's almost as though he is completely outside this and it has no -- bears no responsibility for it and I'm just extremely disappointed.

I really, in the first instance, question the appropriateness of even staging this rally on a day like today with attempts to murder and that's what it is.

the issue is his right to speak, and by extension, other's right to speak.