Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is arguing he was concerned about the Russians interfering in the election, which is why his agency gathered "information." During a recent interview with CNN, Clapper admitted he was simply following orders from the "commander-in-chief," who had ordered intelligence agencies to do so.
"I don't know. I don’t think there was any wrongdoing," Clapper said. "My main concern was with the Russians and the threat posed by the Russians to our very political fabric and ugh, the message I'm getting from all of this is apparently what we were supposed to have done was to ignore the Russian interference, ignore the Russian meddling and the threat that it poses to us and oh by the way, blown off what the then commander-in-chief, President Obama, told us to do, which was to assemble all of the reporting we could."