Trump Incorrectly Quotes Clapper to Falsely Claim FBI Spied On Campaign

President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter: "'Trump should be happy that the FBI was SPYING on his campaign' No, James Clapper, I am not happy. Spying on a campaign would be illegal, and a scandal to boot!”

False.

Trump is referring to comments by James Clapper, who was the director of national intelligence under former President Barack Obama, that were made on “The View” on Tuesday. But Clapper never said what Trump claimed he did. In fact, he said the opposite.

Here’s the exchange:

Joy Behar: “So I ask you, was the FBI spying on Trump’s campaign?”

Clapper: “No, they were not. They were spying on, a term I don’t particularly like, but on what the Russians were doing. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage or influence, which is what they do.”

Behar: “Well, why doesn’t he like that? He should be happy.”

Clapper: “He should be. I mean, Russia — it’s one of the reasons I wrote my book, was the threat Russia poses because they are bent on undermining our system. And that’s what they did, and had a lot of success during the course of the election.”

In other words, Clapper used the word “spy” to describe intelligence gathering on Russian efforts to influence the election. He explicitly denied that the FBI “spied” on Trump’s campaign.

There is no evidence that the intelligence agents planted an informant inside Trump’s campaign to spy on him for political purposes.

As The New York Times has reported, “FBI agents sent an informant to talk to two campaign advisers only after they received evidence that the pair had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign.”

The informant, a U.S. 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.

Clapper described the use of this informant as “a fairly benign tool” that the FBI employs “all the time.”

Sources: The View, Twitter and The New York Times.