Top intel officials refuse to say if Trump asked them to lie

The Washington Post has reported that Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, and Mike Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), were asked by Trump to intervene and get then-FBI director James Comey to back off of the agency’s investigation into the connection between Trump and Russia.

RUBIO: Let me ask both of you: has anyone ever asked you, now or in the past, this administration or any administration, to issue a statement that you knew to be false?

ROGERS: For me, I stand by my previous statement: I’ve never been directed to do anything in the course of my three-plus years as director of the National Security Agency –

RUBIO: Not directed. Asked.

ROGERS: — That I felt to be inappropriate, nor have I felt pressured to do so.

RUBIO: Have you ever been asked to say something that isn’t true?

ROGERS: I stand by my previous statement, sir.

RUBIO: Director Coats?

COATS: I do likewise.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked Coats and Rogers if they had been “asked” to “issue a statement that you knew to be false.”

Both men refused to directly answer Rubio’s query, instead asserting that they had not been “directed” to make false statements. Rubio reiterated that he was not asking whether they had been directed, but specifically if they had been “asked.” Both men refused to respond to Rubio.

They both also refused to answer in the open session whether they had been asked to intervene in an ongoing investigation.