FBI/JAMES CLAPPER/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump tweeted on Wednesday [5-23-18] that Mr. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said he ‘should be happy that the F.B.I. was spying on his campaign.’ Mr. Clapper did not say that. False. Mr. Trump is referring to comments by James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence under former President Barack Obama, that were made on ‘The View’ on Tuesday [5-22-18]. But Mr. Clapper never said what Mr. Trump claimed he did. In fact, he said the opposite…In other words, Mr. Clapper used the word ‘spy’ to describe intelligence gathering on Russian efforts to influence the election. He explicitly denied that the F.B.I. ‘spied’ on Mr. Trump’s campaign. There is no evidence that the intelligence agents planted an informant inside Mr. Trump’s campaign to spy on him for political purposes…The informant, an American academic who teaches in Britain, did not secretly infiltrate the Trump campaign. He met with Trump campaign aides who were under scrutiny for their links to Russia. Mr. Clapper described the use of this informant as ‘a fairly benign tool’ that the F.B.I. employs ‘all the time.'”
-Linda Qiu, “Trump Incorrectly Quotes James Clapper to Falsely Claim F.B.I. Spied On Campaign,” The New York Times online, May 23, 2018