James Clapper, former DNI (Director of National Intelligence) under President Barack Obama from 2010 to 2017, has not admitted that surveillance was conducted on the Presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016.
Clapper had been making a series of television appearances to promote his new book when an interviewer took the opportunity to ask about the recent news connecting the life-long civil servant and former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence to the ongoing Russia imbroglio, of which President Trump sits in the middle. The President has several times mischaracterized Clapper’s words, with Trump claiming to be under attack from political opponents in the U.S. intelligence community and within federal law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.
The root of the issue is the ongoing investigation into President Trump and his campaign’s connections to Russian intelligence. According to Snopes.com, the claim, first put forth by Trump on his Twitter feed because we live in a fiery hellscape, likely originates with a misunderstanding—willful or otherwise—of the reasons behind the FBI’s October 2016 decision to seek a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) warrant to investigate a computer server registered to the Trump Organization that was communicating with two servers registered to a Russian private bank.
The short answer is, it’s unclear if Clapper, in his role as DNI, knew about the wiretap against Paul Manafort, then-candidate Trump’s campaign manager. Rather than evidence of some grand conspiracy, however, this is actually how the United States government is designed to function.
As Director of National Intelligence, Clapper was part of the Executive Branch, ultimately answerable to President Obama. The FBI, which requested the FISA warrant on Manafort that included the Trump Organization server, is part of the separate but equal Judicial Branch. As an agency under a separate branch of the federal government, the FBI was under no obligation to inform other branches of their investigative priorities.