Contacts between Moscow and Trump campaign began last summer, ex-CIA chief says

Contacts between Moscow and Trump campaign began last summer, ex-CIA chief says

Contacts between Moscow and Trump campaign began last summer, ex-CIA chief says, The CIA received intelligence last summer indicating Donald Trump's campaign aides were in contact with Russian government officials, information that was worrisome enough to pass to the FBI for investigation, former CIA Director John Brennan said Tuesday.

Brennan said it wasn't clear at the time if the Trump aides were acting as Russian agents or if the "contacts and interactions" were routine and unconnected to a larger effort by Russian intelligence agencies to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about," Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee in his first testimony since stepping down in January.

He said the intelligence "raised questions in my mind whether the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals."

Brennan's testimony revealed that concerns in the U.S. government about possible cooperation between Moscow and Trump's campaign were deeper than previously known and involved multiple contacts.

He also made clear that the concerns had arisen long before the intelligence community leaders publicly revealed their conclusion in January, shortly before Trump's inauguration, that Moscow had meddled in the race in an effort to help Trump win.

His testimony could intensify the clash between the CIA and Trump, a rift that has widened since the president disclosed highly classified intelligence, reportedly from Israel, about Islamic State to senior Russian diplomats during a May 10 meeting in the Oval Office.

At a separate Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats refused to confirm or deny a Washington Post report that the president asked him in March to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

"On this topic, as well as other topics, I don't feel it's appropriate to characterize discussions and conversations with the president," Coats said.

Trump reportedly made the same request to Adm. Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency. Both intelligence chiefs, the report said, refused to comply with Trump's request, which they both deemed inappropriate.

The White House has refused to comment on the reports, but Trump has previously denied that there was any collusion between his campaign and the Russian government.

He also has denied that he asked then-FBI Director James B. Comey to back off an investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser. Trump fired Comey on May 9.

Brennan declined to name who the CIA believed was in contact with Russian authorities last year. But he said they initially may not have realized they were a target of Russian intelligence services.

"Frequently, individuals who go along a treasonous path do not even realize they are along that path until it gets a bit too late," he said.

In addition to alerting the FBI, which is responsible for counterintelligence investigations, Brennan said he created a special unit in the CIA to monitor and analyze intelligence about Russian's interference in the election, inviting the FBI and the NSA to participate.

In a statement issued from Rome, where Trump landed Tuesday on the third leg of his overseas trip, a White House spokesman said the day's hearings offered no evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

"This morning's hearings back up what we've been saying all along: that despite a year of investigation, there is still no evidence of any Russia-Trump campaign collusion, that the president never jeopardized intelligence sources or sharing, and that even Obama's CIA director believes the leaks of classified information are 'appalling' and the culprits must be 'tracked down.'"

Brennan said he personally warned Russia to stop meddling in the U.S. presidential campaign in an Aug. 4 telephone conversation last year with Gen. Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Service, Russia's primary spy service.

"It should be clear to everyone Russia brazenly interfered in our 2016 presidential election process and that they undertook these activities despite our strong protests and explicit warning that they do not do so," Brennan said.

Comey told Congress in March that the FBI opened its counterintelligence investigation in July into whether Trump's campaign associates cooperated with Moscow in its operations, which included hacking and leaking thousands of Democratic Party emails.

The Justice Department handed the FBI inquiry over to a special counsel, Robert Mueller III, last week to ensure its independence. The probe has broadened to include a criminal investigation into whether Flynn improperly accepted payments from entities associated with the Russian and Turkish governments.

Trump ordered Flynn to resign in February, barely three weeks into the new administration, after news reports disclosed he had lied to White House colleagues, including Vice President Mike Pence, about his communications with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the United States.

Lawyers for Flynn, a former three-star Army general, said Monday that he would not comply with a Senate Intelligence Committee subpoena seeking records of his and the campaign dealings with Russia, citing the "escalating public frenzy against him" and the special counsel investigation.