Prober gives intel to Don, not to panel

WASHINGTON — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said there was “incidental collection” of communications from President Trump’s team between the election and the inauguration — and Trump himself may have been inadvertently surveilled by U.S. intelligence officials.

Nunes (R-Calif.), a Trump ally who is heading the House’s investigations into Russia’s meddling in the election, said he was “alarmed” by the developments — which he briefed the White House on, but not his own committee.

He made the claim on Wednesday hours before a CNN report that the FBI has evidence of something Director James Comey acknowledged they were investigating earlier this week — whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to swing the 2016 election.

“The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation,” the network reported, citing anonymous US officials.

As for the Nunes claims, it was unclear whether Trump’s own communications were monitored. Nunes initially said “yes” when asked if Trump was among those swept up in the intelligence monitoring, then said it was only “possible.”

While Nunes voiced “concern” that the information had been unlawfully disseminated, he offered no evidence — and refused to even loop in his committee’s ranking Democrat before holding a press conference about the claim and meeting with the President to tell him what he’d learned.

“What I’ve read bothers me, and I think it should bother the President himself and his team,” Nunes said after briefing Trump privately at the White House.

He said the surveillance was obtained legally from normal intelligence monitoring of foreign sources. He declined to say how he found out about the info, saying only he learned it from “sources” and the surveillance was unrelated to Russia.

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Nunes’ “actions raise enormous doubt about whether this committee can do its work.” He called it a “profound irregularity” that Nunes shared the information with the White House before his own committee.