TRUMP MAY HAVE BEEN ‘MONITORED’

WASHINGTON — Communications of Donald Trump’s transition officials — possibly including the incoming president himself — may have been scooped up in legal surveillance but then improperly distributed throughout the intelligence community, the chairman of the House intelligence committee said Wednesday. In an extraordinary set of statements to reporters, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes said the intercepted communications do not appear to be related to the ongoing FBI investigation into Trump associates’ contacts with Russia or any criminal warrants. Nunes, who served on Trump’s transition team, said he believes the intelligence collections were done legally but that identities of Trump officials and the content of their communications may have been inappropriately disseminated in intelligence reports. “What I’ve read bothers me, and I think it should bother the president himself and his team,” Nunes said Wednesday after briefing Trump privately at the White House. Trump said he felt “somewhat” vindicated by the revelations, despite the fact that Nunes said the new information did not change his assessment that the president’s explosive claim that Barack Obama wiretapped his New York skyscraper was false. Asked whether he believed the transition team had been spied on, Nunes said: “It all depends on one’s definition of spying.”