TURNER: Thank You Mr. Chairman. Mr. Brennan, Turning Back to the Exchange You Had With

TURNER: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Brennan, turning back to the exchange you had with Mr. Gowdy you stated, and by the way, I want to also thank you, as others have, for the specificity you provide to us. These are difficult issues and concepts, different standards, intelligence assessments, evidence, we’ve got the FBI, CIA, each of you do different jobs, and your expertise is certainly helpful (unintelligible) as we are dealing with elements of this, what we’re looking at, and what this means as we try to move forward with the investigation. So you indicated that you saw, when asked about whether or not you had seen evidence of collusion or collaboration, you said that you saw intelligence that indicated there had been contacts with individuals, with Russians, that were of a nature that bore investigation. You said those contacts might have been benign, might not have been, but they rose to the level of indicating that they needed to be reviewed for their nature and looking into an investigation. Did I characterize that correctly?

BRENNAN: Yes but I don’t want to take this out of context. We see contacts, interactions, between Russian officials and U.S. persons all the time. It is when it’s in the context that there’s something else going on. So we knew at the time that the Russians were involved in this effort to try to interfere in our election, so with that backdrop, and increasing indications that they were involved with that, seeing these types of contacts and interactions during the same period of time raised my concern.

TURNER: Excellent. I appreciate that qualification. But if someone left this hearing today and said that you had indicated that those contacts were evidence of collusion or collaboration, they would be misrepresenting your statements, correct?

BRENNAN: They would have misheard my response to the very good questions that were asked of me. I’m trying to be as clear as possible in terms of what I know, assess, and can say.

TURNER: So you would say that is a misrepresentation of your statement, yes?

BRENNAN: I would say it was not an accurate portrayal of my statement…

TURNER: Excellent.

BRENNAN: Absolutely, it was inconsistent with my remarks.

TURNER: So let me go to the next step. So if someone saw what you saw, and only what you saw, with respect to those contacts, if they looked at the intelligence that you saw where you said it might have been benign, it might not have been benign, and then they characterized “saw” as having been evidence of collusion or collaboration, they would be misrepresenting the intelligence, would they not? BRENNAN: I don’t know what else they have seen that could corroborate or is correlated…

TURNER: It is only what you saw. That would be misrepresenting the intelligence, correct?

BRENNAN: I…I presume they would be misrepresenting what it is that I saw. Again, I don’t know…

TURNER: Thank you. I appreciate that. I believe there are Members of this Committee that deserve that counsel, because your specificity gives us an understanding of what we are reviewing, and I do believe there are those who reviewed some of the information you have seen and represented to the public absolutely incorrectly and misrepresented. And I’d liked to yield the remainder of my time to Mr. Gowdy.