Nunes: Trump transition members were under surveillance during Obama administration
Source: Politico
By AUSTIN WRIGHT 03/22/17 01:19 PM EDT
Members of the Donald Trump transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under surveillance during the Obama administration following November's election, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes told reporters Wednesday.
Nunes said the surveillance appears to have been legal, incidental collection and that it does not appear to have been related to concerns over collusion with Russia.
Nunes is going to the White House later Wednesday to brief the Trump administration on what he has learned, which he said came from "sources."
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Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/devin-nunes-donald-trump-surveillance-obama-236366
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news outlets covering story and their reps in Congress
He informed Ryan, the target of the surveillance, & geld a press conference about it before briefing ranking Dem Intel Cmte Schiff.
Oh, and when asked if he'd contacted Justice Dept about it he said it didn't concern them.
So unusual and so wrong...beyond definition.....think of it....
..............head of a committee investigating someone and something.......runs to that person being investigated with news..just to keep that person informed..of the investigation that the person is running on what is going on.....telling the person the committee is investigating before he tells the rest of the committee????
.........keeping in mind, who is doing the investigating, and who they are looking into????
snip Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a close Trump ally, said the intercepted communications didn’t mention Russia and were therefore unrelated to his investigation. But the subject matter ― the intelligence community’s investigation of Trump and his associates’ connections to foreign powers ― overlapped. And Nunes’ objective appeared political: Deflect attention from Trump and his associates’ ties to Russia, and back up Trump’s claim that he is a victim of “deep state” loyal to former President Barack Obama.
Nunes’ gambit failed. In attempting to put out the Trump-Russia fire, he made much of it worse: In two press conferences on Wednesday, he confirmed that Trump’s surrogates ― and maybe the president himself ― were subjects of legal surveillance, implied that they may have had suspicious contact with agents from a country other than Russia, and potentially disclosed classified information.
And by choosing to brief the president, who’s so closely tied to the investigation, before sharing his new information with his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Nunes also raised doubts about his own ability to lead his committee’s probe.
Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that Nunes “will need to decide if he is the chairman of an independent investigation or if he’s a surrogate for the White House.”
