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Russia hearing live: FBI director Comey says no information to confirm Trump's wiretap claims
Russia hearing live: FBI director Comey says no information to confirm Trump's wiretap claims
(35 minutes later)
3.27pm GMT
4.00pm GMT
15:27
16:00
Republicans harp on leaks as danger to national security
Mike Conaway, Republican of Texas, and Comey have a “Who’s on first” moment.
Gowdy: “If there are 100 people who have the ability to unmask.... then that’s 100 different potential sources of an investigation...”
Comey explains that “Putin hated secretary Clinton so much, that the flipside of that coin was that” he favored the opponent of his hated adversary.
“What other US government agencies have the authority to unmask a US citizen’s name?”
Conaway asks whether and when the Russians switched from opposing Clinton’s loss to favoring Trump’s win.
Comey: NSA, CIA, FBI, I don’t know for sure beyond that. Oh yeah, “main justice” meaning the justice department. And “consumers of our products can ask the maskers to unmask... the White House can make similar requests.. but they can’t on their own collect, so they can’t on their own unmask.”
“They were inseparable. It’s a two-person event,” Conaway said.
Gowdy: How would you begin your investigation of a leak? Where would you begin?
They go back and forth, confusingly.
Comey: First ask who touched the information. Then use investigative tools and techniques.
Comey says that as summer went on, “the Russians sort of gave up” and focused on harming Clinton as much as possible.
Gowdy: Did Clapper know Flynn’s name?
Texas GOPer Conaway has now played himself on a sports metaphor & opts to pronounce @nakashimae's name as "Elaine something or other".
Comey: Can’t say.
Gowdy: Would he have access?
Comey: Maybe.
Gowdy: Former CIA directer John Brennan? Former national security adviser Susan Rice? Former White House adviser Ben Rhodes? Former attorney general Loretta Lynch? Acting AG Sally Yates?
Comey: Not going to discuss / I don’t know.
Gowdy: Did you brief Obama on Flynn?
Comey: Not gonna answer that.
3.21pm GMT
15:21
Late July is when Comey says FBI's Trump/Russia inquiry began.
At time of pivotal Comey letter on Clinton email, FBI had been investigating Trump campaign links to Russia for three months.
Updated
Updated
at 3.22pm GMT
at 4.04pm GMT
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3.52pm GMT
15:20
15:52
Now it’s back to the Republican side, and Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor.
Here’s the committee chairman tossing out the red herring Trump tossed out this morning on Twitter, about a Clinton-Russia nexus.
Gowdy is in charge of hammering on the villainy of the leaks that first revealed Michael Flynn’s secret conversations with Sergey Kislyak and other Trump camp ties to Russia.
Nunes: Comey, you mentioned that you are investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia! But, if we come to information about the Clinton campaign or associates or foundation, will you add that to your investigation?
Gowdy is trying to get Comey to say that reporters are as culpable in the event of leaks of classified material as leakers. He’s also pressing on how reporters would find out classified material.
Comey: We’ll evaluate it. Folks send us stuff all the time.
“Somebody told them who shouldn’t have told them,” Comey explains.
Nunes: Is it possible that the Russians did not try to get at the Clintons?
3.17pm GMT
Comey: No specific comment but sure Russia wants to get in wherever they can.
15:17
Nunes: I hope that you will take info about other campaigns seriously.
Spencer Ackerman
Comey: Of course we would.
Guardian national security editor Spencer Ackerman on “an extraordinary development” at the hearing:
Nunes: but what if Hillary Clinton was tied to Russia too? Eh? Huh?
The leaks that Republicans are citing as damaging to the Trump administration are having an effect that for years was unthinkable: threatening the reauthorization of a key NSA authority for mass surveillance.
It's almost like Nunes was part of Trump's transition team
That authority is known as Section 702. Created in 2008, it is the wellspring of legal authorization for NSA’s Prism program and its “Upstream” vacuuming of data transiting over the internet. All this occurs without warrants, and, though ostensibly targeting foreign activity oversees, necessarily involves the “incidental” collection of Americans’ communications.
Updated
Section 702 is up for reauthorization in December. Civil libertarians want it to die on 31 December. Ron Wyden, a Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has fought unsuccessfully for years for the NSA to disclose how many Americans’ communications have been swept up under 702.
at 3.54pm GMT
Republicans on the intelligence committees are typically the champions of 702. That was before leaks that Trump has attributed to the intelligence agencies concerning his team’s ties to Russia undermined Trump’s lines that all this is malicious politicized claims.
3.49pm GMT
Trey Gowdy, formerly of the Benghazi inquiry, said the leaks “jeopardize Americans’ trust in the surveillance programs.” Florida Republican Tom Rooney, who said he supports 702, said “it is very difficult to keep that sacred trust” should the NSA discover that it leaked Michael Flynn or anyone else’s name and didn’t hold anyone accountable. Chairman Devin Nunes has already speculatedthat 702 may not be reauthorized.
15:49
This is an extraordinary development. The Snowden revelations, of mass surveillance that implicated the privacy of ordinary Americans, did not budge anyone on the committees, Democrat or Republican, off support for 702. Causing the resignation of Trump’s national security adviser, it turns out, might.
Now Terri Sewell, Democrat of Alabama. Does the FBI assume that Russian ambassadors are intelligence agents?
A supreme irony in all of this is that should NSA have collected Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s conversation with Flynn, it wouldn’t have done it under 702, but under a different component of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. NSA director Mike Rogers gingerly clarified that collection within the United States falls under a different authority (title 1 of FISA, to specify).
Comey: No comment.
3.15pm GMT
Sewell: Would it be weird if one of your agents had a secret meeting with the Russian ambassador?
15:15
Comey and Rogers: Yes.
Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, is up.
Sewell: Flynn did it four times and failed to disclose. Why is this acceptable?
Himes wonders whether “Russian hacking” refers to the fact that the intelligence community believes that Russians penetrated DNC and Podesta, stole info and disseminated it.
Comey: I can’t speak to what the disclosures are for other people in the government.
Is that a fair characterization?
Rogers: What he said.
Yes sir, says Rogers.
3.45pm GMT
But Rogers did not analyze whether that activity affected the election outcome.
15:45
Of course you didn’t, Himes said. Next question: Was there any equivalent stolen information from the RNC or Trump?
Stone wants to... say it all under oath?
Comey answers flatly, No. Not, “not that we know of.” Comey says there was no equivalent theft on the Trump side.
It’s only fair that I have a chance to respond 2 any smears or half truths about alleged “Collusion with Russians” from 2day’s Intel Hearing
3.12pm GMT
To us older folk, Roger Stone under oath is like finding King Tut's tomb.
15:12
Updated
Schiff for Comey:
at 3.47pm GMT
Do you know who Roger Stone is? Do you know he associated with Paul Manafort? Are you aware that he has publicly acknowledged communicating with Guccifer 2 (the hacker linked to Russian intelligence? How did Stone know Podesta’s emails would be released? When Podesta himself didn’t yet know he’d been hacked?
3.43pm GMT
Comey says he has read public accounts but can’t comment beyond that.
15:43
3.11pm GMT
Amazing House intelligence committee Republicans only attuned to massive privacy implications of surveillance when it touched Trump's people
15:11
3.41pm GMT
Rogers is asked whether he agrees with British intelligence’s assessment that it collaborated in surveillance of Trump was “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous.”
15:41
Yes, Rogers says. He agrees that the whole charge is nonsense.
Democrats zero in on Manafort
Rogers says the charge has been an inconvenience to US-British cooperation but it has not destroyed the relationship.
Himes, the Connecticut Democrat, said the president will attack anyone, “but there’s one person and one country that’s immune.”
3.09pm GMT
“No matter if Vladimir Putin kills political opponents.”
15:09
Himes says Trump, Flynn, Sessions, Manafort, Page have an “odd connection” and “weird links” to Russia that they’ve dissembled about.
Comey says Obama could not have ordered a tap of Trump.
Now Himes asks about Manafort. He asks Comey to explain law requiring people acting as agents of non-US government entity to register as such.
“No individual in the United States can direct electronic surveillance of anyone,” Comey says. “No president could.”
Himes: Would you agree that guarding against foreign espionage falls under this heading? Is willful failure to comply in some cases a crime leading to counterintelligence concerns?
“We do not have any information that supports those tweets,” Comey says.
Schiff is reading Trump’s wiretapping tweets in order.
What was the gravamen of the offense by Nixon.. in Watergate.
Comey: “As I recall it... the gravamen was an abuse of power, including a break-in...”
Schiff: “It was a break-in of Democratic headquarters, was it not? It also involved a cover-up by the president?’
Comey: Yes.
Comey: Yes.
Schiff is drawing the parallel.
Himes: Manafort ran a campaign to lobby and push favorable media coverage for pro-Russian Ukrainian parties. But it was not publicly disclosed. It was disclosed through reporting. “Did Manafort ever register as a foreign agent under Fara?”
He asks Comey, didn’t Russia break into Democratic headquarters? Comey agrees.
Comey: No comment.
Here are the Trump tweets read by Schiff:
Himes: Wasn’t Manafort Trump’s campaign manager?
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
Comey: It’s obvious from the public record but I don’t want to talk specifically to individuals.
Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
Himes: The Republican platform changed ... It appears, from our standpoint, that we had perhaps somebody who registered under Fara pulling the strings there.
I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!
Updated
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
at 3.45pm GMT
3.04pm GMT
3.36pm GMT
15:04
15:36
Comey: No information to support Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped him
Democrats zero in on Roger Stone, Michael Flynn
With respect to the president’s tweets about Obama wiretapping him, Comey says:
Back to Schiff, for Comey: did you know Stone played role in Trump campaign? Did you see Stone’s bragging about political dirty tricks? Did you know that on 17 August Guccifer communicated to Stone saying let me know if I can help?
I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the DoJ has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the DoJ in all its components.
That sounds like quite a communication. No comment from Comey.
3.02pm GMT
Schiff: Do you know Stone bragged about talking to Assange? Do you know whether Russian intelligence dealt directly with Wikileaks?
15:02
Comey: We assess they used some kind of cutout.
Now Trey Gowdy, the Republican from South Carolina, is at bat.
Schiff: Do you know Stone tweeted confidence that Assange would educate Americans? And then Wikileaks started publishing Podesta’s emails?
He says that Fisa and other surveillance programs are “intentionally designed” to preserve the privacy of US citizens.
Comey: No comment.
Gowdy to Comey, on the gravity of leaking classified material:
Updated
We are going to give you the tools and government in return promises to safeguard the privacy of US citizens. And when that agreement is broken, it violates the trust...
at 3.38pm GMT
Gowdy has brandished the terrifying prospect of the government breaking its promise to safeguard the privacy of US citizens as it conducts surveillance.
3.33pm GMT
15:33
“What we are reauthorizing this fall has nothing to do with what we are discussing,” Gowdy admits. But he says the public does not draw the distinction.
3.31pm GMT
15:31
Neil Gorsuch hearing: Live video
Here’s the Gorsuch hearing:
3.30pm GMT
15:30
Republicans demand investigation of leaks
Gowdy says there were “nefarious” motives behind the leaks. Has the FBI begun its investigation?
Comey: “I can’t say because I don’t want to confirm that that was classified information.”
Gowdy: But you confirmed the investigation into the Trump camp Russia ties. And aren’t these leaks a matter of life and death?
Comey: Leaks are terrible and taken very seriously. But “there’s a whole lot of wrong information” in newspapers. We don’t want to help and compound the offence that’s committed.
Gowdy: “wiretap has a very specific meaning.” Can you assure people that FBI will investigate leaks.
