New wrinkle amid charges of wiretapping
Communications of Donald Trump’s transition officials — possibly including the incoming president himself — may have been scooped up in legal surveillance and 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.
Nunes would not say how he received the new information.
Nunes briefed reporters before sharing the information with Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. Schiff decried Nunes’ handling of the matter, saying the chairman had created “profound doubt” about the credibility of their committee’s investigation.