Watch Live Stream: Intelligence Officials Testify Before The Senate

WASHINGTON, DC — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, DNI Director Dan Coats, Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday to testify on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. However, with multiple reports breaking Tuesday night further suggesting that President Trump may have tried to influence the investigation into ties between his campaign associates and Russia, senators may instead focuses on questions about these matters.

According to the Washington Post, associates of Coats say Trump tried to pressure the director of national intelligence to get the FBI to back off its investigation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. This action may have come dangerously close to trying to obstruct justice, though Coats refrained from discussing private conversations with the president in today's setting. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch for daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

When question about whether Trump asked him to try to drop the FBI investigation, Coats said he did not feel it was appropriate to address that question in a public setting. However, he said he never felt pressured by anyone to drop an investigation. Rogers made the same point, that he did not feel "pressured" to intervene in any investigation, but would not say whether he was asked to intervene.

"I have never been directed to do anything I believed to be illegal, immoral, unethical, or inappropriate," Rogers said.

Throughout the hearings, the senators grew frustrated with the intel chiefs' refusal to answer many direct questions. Sen John McCain, the Republican from Arizona, said it was "Owellian" that Coats wouldn't comment on a front page story in the Washington Post.

"It certainly is an interesting town in which we exist," he said.

When asked by Sen. Angus King, an Independent from Maine, what legal basis Coats was using to refrain from answering questions about his conversations with Trump, Coats said, "I'm not sure I have a legal basis."

In a tweet, Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, "Whether Dirs. Rogers & Coats felt pressured is not issue – whether [Trump] sought to interfere is. Public deserves an answer; we will get it."

Because of the formal topic of the hearing, the top intelligence officials also addressed questions about the process of "unmasking," the procedure by which the name of an American collected incidentally in the surveillance of foreign individuals is revealed to agents of the government. In his opening statement, Coats said he's been asked multiple times for the number of American individuals' names who have been incidentally collected. However, he argued that this would be a waste of resources and would result in additional violations of the privacy of the American individuals whose names were collected.

Watch a live stream of the testimony here.

Write a letter to the editor of the White House Patch.

Like The White House Patch Facebook Page.

Follow us on Twitter.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images