Former director of national intelligence James Clapper claimed Thursday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” he’d never heard of Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, or Stefan Halper until after he had left office.
“Did you know, Mr. Halper, the academic at Cambridge? [Halper] Do you know him at all,” Hewitt asked.
“No, I do not. I didn’t know anything about that until it came out in the media,” Clapper replied. “I didn’t know anything about it contemporaneously.”
Halper, a Cambridge professor, reportedly worked as a source for the FBI and reported on the inner workings of the Trump campaign to the federal government. He also met with Papadopoulos in London while Papadopoulos was serving as a foreign policy adviser to the campaign, in an apparent attempt to extract more information.
Hewitt asked if Halper’s name ever came up at all during his work as director of intelligence and Clapper said he’d never heard of him. Clapper also claimed he’d only heard of Papadopoulos and Page after their names were discussed in the mainstream media.
Page was put under surveillance by the federal government during the 2016 presidential election, after the government requested a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant, while former President Barack Obama was still in office. (RELATED: CNN’s Chris Cuomo Tells RNC Chairwoman Mansplaning Is)
“None of these names, actually, when we left the scene in January of ’17, I never heard of George Papadopoulos. Carter Page, I may have known about mainly through media, but, and certainly the identity of the informant, I didn’t know.” Clapper concluded.
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