WASHINGTON--Former CIA director John Brennan said on Tuesday he had noticed contacts between associates of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia during the 2016 election and grew concerned Moscow had sought to lure Americans down "a treasonous path."
Brennan, who headed the agency until Trump became president in January, also told a congressional hearing that he personally warned the head of Russia's FSB security service in a phone call last August that meddling in the election would hurt relations with the United States.
Separately, the top U.S. intelligence official, Dan Coats, sidestepped a question on a Washington Post report that Trump had asked him and the National Security Agency chief to help him knock down the notion there was evidence of such collusion. But Coats did say he has made clear to Trump's administration that "any political shaping" of intelligence would be inappropriate.
The comments by Brennan and Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, added fuel to a controversy that has engulfed Trump since he fired FBI Director James Comey two weeks ago amid the agency's investigation into possible collusion between people associated with his presidential campaign and Russia.
"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign," Brennan's said in testimony to the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee. Brennan said that he cannot say definitively there was actual collusion.
Brennan's testimony was the first public confirmation of the worry at high levels of the U.S. government last year over suspicious contacts between Trump campaign associates and Moscow. It was also the most complete account to date of the CIA's thinking at a time when intelligence agencies were putting together evidence that Russia was interfering in the heated U.S. presidential race to help businessman Trump, a Republican, defeat Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.
Comey was heading the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into Russian interference and possible collusion with Trump's campaign, leading to accusations by Trump critics that he has sought to curtail the FBI inquiry.
In another development, Trump has retained Marc Kasowitz, a New York-based trial lawyer who has represented Trump in the past, as his private attorney for special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Russia matter, a Fox Business Network reporter said on Twitter.
