WASHINGTON—Senators angrily confronted top intelligence officials at a congressional hearing on Wednesday when they refused to discuss whether President Donald Trump had pressured them to intervene in an FBI probe into Russia and the 2016 U.S. election.
Both National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers and Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee they believed their conversations with the president were confidential.
Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, was one of several exasperated senators who pressed the officials.
“Why are you not answering the questions?” King asked. “What’s the legal basis for your refusal for you to testify to this committee.”
The officials provided no legal basis. “You are inappropriately refusing to answer these questions today,” King told Rogers.
But Rogers said he had never been directed to do anything illegal, immoral or inappropriate during his time as NSA director while Coats said he had never felt pressured to intervene in the shaping of intelligence.
