Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper may sit on the executive board of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, but his track record shows he’s no truth-telling, law-abiding saint.
The Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law claims to be a “non-partisan interdisciplinary institute” dedicated to promoting ethics and the rule of law inside and outside of government, but Clapper’s resume shows he has not done that.
Like many other U.S. intelligence officials, Clapper participated in the collective effort to undermine Donald Trump’s run for president in 2016. The career bureaucrat leaked information about the discredited Steele dossier to CNN’s Jake Tapper with the hopes of aiding the network’s anti-Trump coverage. The CNN anchor used that confidential information to write an article summarizing the dossier’s contents and noting that the allegations were disclosed to Trump by then-FBI Director James Comey.
Shortly after the leak, Clapper was hired by CNN as a national security analyst.
When Congress pressed Clapper in 2018 on his role in promoting the Russia collusion hoax, Clapper “provided inconsistent testimony to the Committee about his contacts with the media, including CNN,” according to a report by the House Intelligence Committee. At first, Clapper claimed he never passed along key information to reporters. Later, he “admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic.”
That wasn’t Clapper’s first time lying to Congress. In 2013, Clapper falsely testified that the Obama administration’s National Security Agency does not conduct mass surveillance on Americans.