Clapper: Trump rhetoric on intel agencies alarming U.S. allies 'I think there’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,' Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says.

Democrats used a bipartisan hearing on Russian hacking Thursday to attack President-elect Donald Trump's ongoing disparagement of the intelligence community, arguing his statements ruin morale and embolden the country’s enemies.

Minority members on the Senate Armed Services Committee turned Congress’ first hearing on Russia’s alleged election hacks into a platform to strike at the billionaire businessman and try to drive a wedge between him and GOP leadership — with even South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham joining in the criticism.


“Let’s talk about who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence community,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said during a hearing with top intelligence leaders, ticking off Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and the Islamic State as the “biggest benefactors."

Even Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seemed to implicitly rebuke Trump's ongoing refusal to believe the government's assessment that senior Moscow officials orchestrated a cyber campaign that roiled the Democratic Party in last year's election.

“I think there’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,” said Clapper, who leaves office on Jan. 20, in response to McCaskill's speech.

Later, Clapper — who strongly defended the government's assessment that Moscow directed the election-season hacks — told Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that Trump’s rhetoric about intelligence agencies is alarming American allies.

“I do think that public trust and confidence in the intelligence community is crucial,” he said. “And I've received many expressions of concern from foreign counterparts about, you know, the disparagement of the U.S. intelligence community, or I should say what has been interpreted as disparagement of the intelligence community."

These exchanges were peppered throughout the session, which was being held amid Trump’s ongoing public spat with the U.S. intelligence community.

The president-elect on Friday will receive a briefing from Clapper, FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan on an extensive report detailing Moscow's digital campaign to interfere with the 2016 presidential race.

The Obama administration has publicly accused the Kremlin of directing the computer attacks that hit the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign operatives. The digital thefts eventually led to a WikiLeaks dump of embarrassing internal emails that ousted top Democratic National Committee leaders and destabilized Clinton’s campaign in the final months.

President Barack Obama, who directed the intelligence community to create the report, is receiving his own briefing on Thursday.

The looming memo and Trump's pending briefing has shed a spotlight on the incoming commander in chief's long-standing skepticism about the government's intelligence apparatus.

Trump has repeatedly accused the intelligence officials hawking false narratives in an attempt to undermine his incoming administration. Most recently, Trump cited as evidence WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s repeated insistence that his organization did not receive the emails from the Russian government.

The billionaire businessman's odd team-up brought a sharp admonishment from Democrats and even several congressional Republicans, including Senate defense hawks like Graham.

Clapper and NSA chief Adm. Michael Rogers also denounced Assange at Thursday's hearing, when McCain asked if "any credibility" should be "attached to this individual," given WikiLeaks' record of leaking materials that put U.S. lives "in direct danger."

"Not in my view," Clapper replied.

"I’d second those comments," Rogers answered.

Perhaps sensitive to the public perception, Trump on Thursday tried to walk back his previous online comments.

“The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange — wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people....,” he tweeted, “to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against "Intelligence" when in fact I am a big fan!”

Some of Trump’s previous statements on the intelligence apparatus would indicate otherwise. Most notably, he has latched onto claims in the run-up to the Iraq war that the regime of Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. The assertions were ultimately false.

Clapper conceded "my fingerprints" were on the report including those claims. But he argued the intelligence community has striven not to repeat the same mistakes.

"That was 13 years ago," he told Blumenthal. "We have done many, many things to improve our processes ... in order to prevent that from happening again."

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who is also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Clapper and Rogers what impact Trump’s tweets might have on the intelligence community’s morale.

“I hardly think it helps,” Clapper said.

“I just don't want a situation where our workforce decides to walk,” Rogers added.

Graham later crossed the aisle to join the Democrats in their condemnation, addressing his remarks directly to Trump.

“What I don’t want you to do is undermine those who are serving our nation in this area until you’re absolutely certain they need to be undermined,” Graham said.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) insisted that he trusted Clapper and the intelligence community to carry out the election-season hacking review and brief lawmakers on its findings.

Clapper said the intelligence community would brief Congress on the report and release an unclassified, public version "early next week."

“I intend to push the envelope as much as a I can,” Clapper said, adding that the public needs to know why he thinks the Russians were interfering.

Reportedly, the memo — which Clapper said was prepared by the CIA, NSA and FBI — will drop Monday afternoon.

Until then, though, Clapper cautioned that “we're really not prepared to discuss this beyond standing by our earlier statements."

Still, the intelligence chief told lawmakers that the memo "will ascribe a motivation" to Russia's election hacks. He later elaborated that Russia had "more than one motive."

"That will be in the report," he added.

In the meantime, McCain vowed to strike back against Russia for what he called an "unprecedented attack on our democracy."

The Obama administration has already slapped Russia with sanctions and ejected 35 alleged Russian spies from the U.S. in retaliation for the election-season hacks.

But McCain wants Congress to go further. He will have support from many Democrats, and even some within his own party.

"I think what Obama did was throw a pebble," Graham said. "I'm ready to throw a rock."

Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the panel’s top Democrat, also re-upped on Thursday a call for a special select Senate committee on Russian hacking because the issue “spills across jurisdictional divide.”

McCain has supported the select committee proposal but recently backed down after GOP leaders rebuffed the attempts, insisting that the existing committee structure is best suited to probing the situation.

In addition to the Armed Services examination, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee are both looking into Moscow’s digital menace.

