Former DNI James Clapper said Thursday that he believes Attorney General William Barr “deliberately” used the term “spying” to refer to intelligence agencies’ activities in connection with the Trump campaign in 2016.
“When the attorney general — I believe he used that term deliberately, you know, he has been the attorney general before so he’s not unfamiliar with all this, I thought it was quite stunning,” Clapper told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota.
Clapper has been involved in the “spygate” debacle from the beginning, accidentally setting off the Trumpian conspiracy theorists himself when he used the term in an attempt to explain that the intelligence agencies’ intent was to investigate Russia election meddling, not the Trump campaign itself.
“Spying is a term I have never liked, I never liked that term being applied to me, even though I spent 50 years in the intelligence business,” Clapper added. “It has a bad connotation. It’s a pejorative term, it smacks of illegality, lack of oversight, all those kind of things, and that wasn’t the case here.”
Clapper thinks Barr used the word “spying” at Senate Appropriations Committee hearing “deliberately” pic.twitter.com/uqnOXFexoq
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) April 11, 2019
Read a deep dive into the word “spying” and how it’s been used and abused in this case here.
Not meaning to put too fine a point on it, but no shit. I have no doubt that Barr was told to use the term, to bring it up during the hearing, and that if he hadn’t the President would have called him out on the carpet in public either for that or for some other trumped-up charge. Barr was speaking to an audience of one, and my personal belief is that his hesitation when saying it was his double-speak, his way of telling the rest of us to read between the lines. “I’m under duress, I don’t like doing this.”
This is what people in the Executive Branch do. They carry the President’s water, as little water as possible in many cases, in order to get along. The whole time there’s a nod and a wink that it’s all BS and that no one should believe what they’re saying. It’s kabuki theater.
In following comments, Clapper also released highly classified information by revealing that water is wet.
The term was used to please Individual One.
You could tell he was struggling in that moment of hesitation. He knew he was about to cross a rubicon that he wasn’t altogether comfortable with. But then he went and said it.
Even under the worst possible circumstances we have ever witnessed.
WHY
Anyone that fails trump is terminated and crucified with a noose around there neck forever.
Again WHY
The job doesn’t pay enough to end a career after a stint with this maniac.