Ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Sunday denied that former President Obama ordered the FBI or any other agency to wiretap President Trump during the election season.
"Not to my knowledge, no," Clapper told NBC News on Sunday.
However, it was Clapper who in March of 2013 testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the intelligence community (IC) did not collect data on U.S. citizens.
Just three months later, Edward Snowden turned Clapper's answer into one of the monumental deceptions of all time when he leaked information that detailed how the National Security Agency had been collecting metadata from the phone companies on calls made by U.S. citizens.
Feds insisted that Section 215 of the Patriot Act authorized the NSA to collect the phone records of millions of Americans in its fight against terrorism after 9/11.
The resulting firestorm raged on until June of 2015 when Congress put an end to the NSA's bulk collection when it passed the USA Freedom Act, legislation that reformed the IC's use of mass surveillance in this country.
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