Trump transition officials ‘unmasked’ by intel community

Communications of Donald Trump’s transition officials – possibly including the incoming president himself – may have been scooped up in legal surveillance but then improperly distributed throughout the intelligence community, the chairman of the House intelligence committee has said.

United States intelligence agencies regularly monitor foreign individuals of interest, so if a member of the Trump transition team – or Donald Trump himself – communicated with a person under surveillance, it’s likely those interactions would be recorded.

“I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked”, he said.

Intelligence reports are legally supposed to “mask” the identities of US citizens if they’re incidentally picked up in surveillance during an investigation. Earlier this week, James Comey, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told Congress that there was no evidence to support the claims by Mr Trump, which were made on Twitter several weeks ago. He briefed Trump at the White House on the material. That’s not out of the ordinary – it’s how intelligence officials found out Flynn was improperly discussing relieving sanctions with a Russian ambassador. Two, does this have anything to do with the ongoing investigations into the Trump team’s ties to Russian Federation?

Nunes said the information was “legally collected” after a judge issued a warrant for an investigation looking at foreign surveillance.

Nunes said the surveillance – revealed to him by an unnamed source – was unrelated to an ongoing investigation into Russian interference of last year’s presidential election.

“The chairman also shared this information with the White House before providing it to the committee, another profound irregularity given that the matter is now under investigation”.

What’s clear again today is Nunes, a man who was himself a key member of Donald Trump’s “executive committee transition team”, must recuse himself and a special prosecutor should be appointed immediately. A main goal of the inquiry, the chairman added, is to determine whether any regulations or procedures were violated after the intelligence was gathered.

“I’m actually alarmed by it”, Nunes said. “The question is, was it masked – why was it unmasked, if it was unmasked?”.

The GOP lawmaker said he has asked the FBI, NSA and Central Intelligence Agency to aid in the review.

Trump was asked by a reporter if he felt the Nunes statement vindicated him.

“I can tell you that the case is more than that”, Schiff said.

I would like to withhold further comment until we know more.

Nunes said he shared the information with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and then was going to the White House to brief them, personally, after his presser.