Coats and Rogers said they did not feel the public setting of the Senate intelligence committee's hearing was an appropriate venue to discuss their conversations with Trump, which have reportedly included talk of the FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
In limiting his comments to attempts at "shaping intelligence", Coats did not contradict reporting by the Washington Post that President Trump asked for his help in intervening with former FBI Director James Comey to convince him to back off the Flynn investigation.
DETROW: Not quite because Mike Rogers said something similar, saying, I've never been directed to do anything illegal, immoral, inappropriate, and I don't recall feeling pressure to do so.
Warner said he came out of the hearing "with more questions than when I went in".
The senators are expected to ask intelligence officials about their contacts with President Trump, and whether he pressured them regarding the Russian investigation. Addressing Rogers, King asked whether the White House invoked executive privilege over the president's conversations with Rogers and Coats, which would bar them from discussing the conversations publicly.
Against this powerful account, Coats, Rosenstein, NSA chief Michael Rogers and acting Federal Bureau of Investigation director Andrew McCabe offered hours of nothing. During the hearing, Sen.
"We know what you mean", one of the senators reassured him.
"The chair is going to exercise the right to allow the witnesses to answer the question", Burr said after cutting off Harris' questions. Coats said in response to a line of questioning from Arizona Sen.
Pens regroup, Preds look for road magic in Game 5
Crosby finished the evening with three assists, pushing Pittsburgh to within one win of back-to-back Stanley Cups . But Rinne struggled again Thursday in Pittsburgh , a place where he's never started and won in six career games.
White House officials had weighed trying to block Comey from testifying on Thursday by arguing that his discussions with the president pertained to national security and that there was an expectation of privacy.
"What is the legal basis for your refusal to testify to this committee?" asked Sen.
However on Wednesday, multiple Republicans on the committee grew frustrated when the intelligence officials would not answer their simple yes or no questions about whether the bevy of media reports on their interactions with Trump were true.
McCabe replied that it wasn't appropriate for him to answer the question.
MONTANARO: Yes, I think it did. The underlying question here, put out in a newspaper report, as often happens before someone testifies before Congress, was a suggestion that President Trump himself had asked Dan Coats to help intervene, in some way, with the FBI and get this Russian Federation investigation changed or derailed or whatever the word would be.
Comey's Thursday testimony in perhaps the most anticipated since Hillary Clinton's 11-hour Benghazi hearing in 2015. You can't say that there's no impact from sweeping up law-abiding Americans' communications under this program, and then complain that counting the number of those calls and emails would violate their privacy.
King then asked Coats and Rogers whether they would commit to answering the questions in a closed session. The latter got crossways with Senator Angus King, Independent of ME, and the Mustache of Righteousness was having none of Coats's foolishness.
"I stand by the comments I've made, I'm not interested in repeating myself, sir", Rogers, known sometimes for being inappropriate, stated. Angus King, I-Maine, he could not specify what was classified about the conversation. But instead of addressing the substance, he said he "did not want to publicly share what he thought were private conversations with the President of the United States, most of them - almost all of them - intelligence related and classified".
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