Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus dismissed reports that members of the Trump campaign had ongoing contact with Russian before the election and noted that the “highest levels of the intelligence community” have said it was an “inaccurate and grossly overstated story, and it’s not true.”
Priebus said, “Listen, there may be some bad actors within the intelligence community or some holdovers, nobody knows. But I will tell you this, and I have talked to top levels of the intelligence community. Every department, by the way, not just people that are only folks that we’ve put in place, and they have green-lighted me to say that I have talked to the highest levels of intelligence officials, and they have assured me that the New York Times story about constant contacts is grossly overstated and inaccurate. So I wouldn’t come on your show and say something like that if I didn’t have a green light and approval to say it. It’s not true. Unless the highest levels of the intelligence community don’t know what they’re talking about, which I highly doubt.”
He added, “I don’t represent the campaign, but what I just told you is what the highest levels of the intelligence community have told me, which is it is an inaccurate and grossly overstated story, and it’s not true.”
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