SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Former Director Clapper, in your opening statement you suggested that the Russians should be celebrating and that they are likely emboldened because they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and at minimal cost, and they are likely to continue. In the French national elections, which just concluded yesterday, there was a stunning dump of hacked emails at the last moment in an attempt, I at least to believe, to influence the outcome of that election in a way designed to help advance a candidate favored by the Kremlin, and in that instance there was a significant amount of fake news, of manufactured articles mixed in with seemingly actual emails that had been hacked, and there are allegations that there was coordination between alt-right news sites trying to forward this information and to get it out around France and around the world. Is that your understanding of what's just happened in France, and more importantly, was there any evidence that you saw of comparable coordination between alt-right news sites and released information in attempts to influence the 2016 American presidential election?
JAMES CLAPPER: Senator Coons, honestly, all I know is what I'm reading in the media, and so I don't have access to any intelligence information that would help me cast any light or could authoritatively answer your question. All I know is what's in the media.
COONS: But during the period when you did have regular access to intelligence, did you see any evidence to suggest that the long-standing Russian practice of spreading misinformation and fake news was being amplified by news sites in the United States and any reason to believe that might have been coordinated or intentional?
CLAPPER: Well, I don't know about the latter, but I -- and I think some news outlets were probably unwitting of that. It certainly went on, but I can't say to what extent that was coordinated intentionally with certain news outlets. Again, that's kind of in the domestic realm.
