Dems critical of panel chair sharing data
WASHINGTON — California Republican Devin Nunes may have handed House Democrats on Wednesday their strongest argument yet for an independent investigation of Russian interference in November’s election.
In an extraordinary series of moves, Nunes, a Tulare native who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, held two news conferences and rushed off to the White House to tell President Trump personally that U.S. intelligence services may have picked up “incidental” information on
Trump and his transition team as part of a court-approved surveillance of foreign powers.
Before his meeting with the president, Nunes said he briefed House Speaker Paul Ryan on the information he had, but hadn’t discussed it with committee Democrats, including its ranking Democrat, a fellow Californian.
Without seeing it, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, “It is impossible for us to evaluate any of the merits of what the chairman has said.”
By late Wednesday, Schiff said he still had not received the information and accused Nunes, who served on Trump’s transition team, of jeopardizing the credibility of the Intelligence Committee’s investigation into possible connections between Russian election tampering and members of Trump’s election and transition teams.
“The chairman will either need to decide if he’s leading an investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House because he cannot do both,” he told reporters.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona also criticized Nunes and called for the independent investigation Democrats have been seeking. “No longer does the Congress have credibility to handle this alone,” McCain said.
Members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, evenly divided between the parties, have traditionally attempted to be nonpartisan. But Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, who sits on the Intelligence Committee, called the way Nunes handled things Wednesday “profoundly irregular.”
“It smacks to me of something that was orchestrated out of the White House because the president spent five hours Monday watching our hearing and tweeting about it,” Speier said. “This can make the waters murky and give him some semblance of credibility.”
Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower has been widely rejected by domestic and foreign intelligence officials as lacking any basis in fact, and on Wednesday, Nunes said repeatedly there was no evidence in “dozens” of intelligence reports he’d received to support the president’s allegation.
But when asked about what Nunes told him, Trump said he felt “somewhat” vindicated.
Nunes told reporters that all the information he’d received and shared with Trump was legally collected. But he said he was “certainly alarmed,” because the reports had nothing to do with Russia and its interference in the November election, and because the information was widely disseminated among intelligence officials, who had revealed the identities, or “unmasked,” the people involved.
The Trump campaign is under investigation by the FBI and the House and Senate Intelligence committees over Russia’s interference in the November election, and potential collusion between Trump officials and the Russians. FBI director James Comey confirmed the existence of the probe by his agency in House testimony Monday, during which he revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “hated” Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and wanted Trump to win the election.
“What I saw has nothing to do with Russia and nothing to do with the Russia investigation, and everything to do with possible surveillance,” Nunes said. He said he took the information to the White House because “the president needs to know these intelligence reports are out there. And I have a duty to tell him that.”
Nunes raised more questions than he answered, however. Surveillance often picks up routine communications by the targeted foreign agents that may “incidentally” name a person in the United States. Comey testified Monday that Trump was never under courtordered surveillance during the campaign, the transition or after taking office.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, an Intelligence Committee veteran from San Francisco, referred to Comey’s testimony Wednesday in calling for an independent investigation.
“Republicans are grasping at straws because the FBI director confirmed that President Obama did not wiretap President Trump, and affirmed an investigation of coordination between the Russians and individuals affiliated with the Trump campaign,” Pelosi said. “Chairman Nunes is deeply compromised, and he cannot possibly lead an honest investigation.” At Monday’s hearing, Schiff, a former U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, had built a careful but circumstantial case of publicly known contacts between numerous Trump associates, including current cabinet members, and various Russian officials. The White House has flatly denied any wrongdoing.
In an interview Wednesday, Schiff alluded to a larger picture from classified information that members of the committee have seen and explained his approach in the public hearing.
“The reason that we referred in the open hearing to the circumstances around all the Trump personnel is that that’s all we’re able to talk about in the open,” Schiff said. “So people are only seeing a small window into what the investigation is looking at. I certainly feel that if the American people were able to review the evidence, that they would find the investigation more than warranted.”
Schiff pointed to the importance of Comey acknowledging the FBI investigation. “They don’t do that without specific and credible information that someone may be acting as an agent of a foreign power,” Schiff said. “That’s pretty telling. It’s not something undertaken lightly, particularly when it involves the nominee of one of the major political parties running for president.”
“The president needs to know these intelligence reports are out there. And I have a duty to tell him that.” Devin Nunes