Ex-intelligence chief: Trump's 'indifference' to Russian election meddling is 'so disturbing'

Intelligence community veteran James Clapper on Friday warned that President Donald Trump's "singular indifference" to Russian meddling in the American election may pose more danger to the country than any potential collusion he had with the Kremlin.

Discussing special counsel Robert Mueller's indictments of more than a dozen Russian nationals and organizations on CNN, the former director of national intelligence said the highly-detailed report was a "compelling reinforcement" of what the intelligence community has been warning about since before Trump was even elected.

Clapper noted that he and other intelligence chiefs briefed the president in January 2017 on their findings, but as host Anderson Cooper pointed out, the Justice Department and other agencies tasked with protecting America from foreign threats have not yet "manned the barricades" to prevent the same thing from happening in 2016.

"That's what's so disturbing about this," Clapper mused. "The threat that the Russians are posing and which they're going to continue to pose to our basic system."

"The president, and his singular indifference to this, really imperils our country," he added. "To me, that transcends whether there was collusion or not."

Watch below, via CNN: