At least three White House senior officials are linked to Rep. Devin Nunes’ visit.
WASHINGTON — At least three senior White House officials including the top lawyer for the National Security Council were involved in the handling of intelligence files that were shared with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and showed that Trump campaign officials were swept up in U.S. surveillance of foreign nationals, according to U.S. officials.
The White House role in the matter contradicts assertions by the committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, and adds to mounting concerns that the Trump administration is collaborating with the leader of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Though White House officials have refused to answer questions about the documents shared with Nunes, a White House letter to the House committee on Thursday said it had “discovered documents” that might show whether information collection on U.S. people was mishandled and was prepared to show them to lawmakers.
One of those involved in procuring the documents cited by Nunes has close ties to former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The official, Ezra Cohen, survived a recent attempt to oust him from his White House job by appealing to Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Stephen Bannon, the officials said.
The materials unearthed by Nunes have been used to defend President Donald Trump’s baseless claims on Twitter that he had been wiretapped at Trump Tower after the election under a surveillance operation ordered by then-President Barack Obama. FBI Director James Comey and others have said that claim is false.
Nunes reviewed the material during a surreptitious visit to the White House grounds last week.
He then returned the next day in a visit he said was arranged so that he could brief Trump on what Nunes depicted as potential abuses by U.S. spy agencies brought to his attention by an unnamed source.
Nunes and White House press secretary Sean Spicer have repeatedly refused to answer questions about the identities of those involved in unearthing the intelligence reports or arranging for Nunes to review them at the White House complex — although Nunes at one point said his source was not a member of the White House staff.
That assertion is under new scrutiny after U.S. officials confirmed that three senior officials at the National Security Council — considered part of the White House — played roles in the collection and handling of information shared with Nunes.
The officials said that the classified files were gathered by Cohen, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council.
After assembling reports that showed that Trump campaign officials were mentioned or inadvertently monitored by U.S. spy agencies targeting foreign individuals, Cohen took the matter to the top lawyer for the National Security Council, John Eisenberg.
The third White House official involved was identified as Michael Ellis, a lawyer who previously worked with Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee, but joined the Trump administration as an attorney who reports to Eisenberg.
Ellis and Eisenberg report to the White House counsel, Donald McGahn.
The involvement of Ellis and Cohen was first reported Thursday by the New York Times.
A spokesman for the NSC declined to comment. Jack Langer, a spokesman for Nunes, said the chairman “will not confirm or deny speculation about his source’s identity.” Langer also said that Nunes “will not respond to speculation from anonymous sources,” despite Nunes’s insisting on the anonymity of his own source.
Nunes, who served as an adviser to the Trump transition team, said the files he reviewed had made him concerned that U.S. intelligence agencies had mishandled information on members of the Trump campaign, though Nunes acknowledged that he saw no evidence of illegality.