After ‘Bizarre’ Moves, What’s Next For Fractured House Intel Committee?

The Senate Intelligence Committee is also investigating, so far with a much lower profile and no dedicated public events. The two had said Monday that they could not answer some questions in public, and Nunes said the committee needs those answers “before we can move forward”.

“Mr. Nunes’s antics serve only to underline the urgency of a serious, nonpartisan and uncompromising investigation into Russia’s interference in the election and any contacts between Moscow’s agents and the Trump campaign”.

Nunes was given intelligence, apparently under the table from US intelligence officers, which indicates the names of Trump campaign aides were “demasked” in intelligence reports that had nothing to do with Russian Federation or any alleged wrongdoing by the Trump campaign.

Russian Federation has denied allegations by USA intelligence agencies that it sought to influence the election, and Trump, a Republican, has said the controversy was cooked up by Democrats and fanned by hostile media.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who also sits on the Intelligence Committee, confirmed that he has also not been briefed on the information that Nunes has.

Nunes said he alerted House Speaker Paul Ryan about the collection and is traveling to the White House Wednesday afternoon.

Mr Nunes has not shared the documents he obtained during his “peculiar midnight run” this week with his Democratic colleagues in the committee, said Mr Schiff. “What other explanation can there be?” When the communications of USA persons are swept up in spy agency surveillance, their identities can be used in queries against intelligence databases, but must eventually be masked through a process known as minimization.

“As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any USA citizen”, Lewis said, adding that “any suggestion otherwise is simply false”.

Devin Nunes, R-Calif., right, accompanied by the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., talks to reporters, on Capitol Hill on March, 15, 2017. In a statement, a spokesman for Nunes said he is “extremely concerned by the possible improper unmasking of names of United States citizens”. “It appears like this was all legal”. He shared what he claimed to have seen with President Trump, which also was weird since it’s the president and his people who are under investigation.

Nunes said he believed the Trump team’s communications were caught “incidentally”. The panel is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election campaign.

Security expert and former counterintelligence officer, John Schindler, said that Trump’s presidency could end if he faced an indictment over allegations his campaign team conspired with Russian Federation to disrupt the presidential election. I mean we have many, you can go up and down the ladder.

‘I’m actually alarmed by it, ‘ Nunes said.

“What I’ve read bothers me, and I think it should bother the president himself and his team”, the chairman told reporters while standing in front of the West Wing entrance.

Predictably, Schiff was furious, or in more Washington-speak, he had “grave concerns”: “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”. Later that day, White House spokesman Sean Spicer tried to downplay Manafort’s role in the Trump campaign.

“He has not shown it to me”, Gowdy told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Trump should be the first one saying “Bring it on” after FBI Director said Monday he’s been authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation because of the extreme public interest in the case. “There’s been an acknowledgment that there are documents out there showing that people were surveilled or monitored”. FBI Director James Comey and NSA director Mike Rogers will be back Friday, it seems, for a second round of testimony.