Rep. Devin Nunes: Paul Manafort Volunteers to Speak to House Intel Committee

Addressing the congressional panel, the two officials noted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating since July, possible Russian efforts to interfere in the presidential elections.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) continued the ongoing saga of Donald Trump’s wiretapping claims against former President Barack Obama by declaring on Friday, “There was no wiretapping of Trump Tower”.

Manafort resigned as Trump’s campaign chief in August 2016 following reports of illicit payments related to his previous work for the political party of Ukraine’s pro-Russian former president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Schiff also said Nunes’ decision to brief the White House on the matter was “wholly inappropriate” and casted “grave doubts into the ability to run a credible investigation and the integrity of that investigation”.

Paul Manafort, then Donald Trump’s campaign manager, at the Republican National Convention in July.

Nunes said he was contacted by Manafort’s lawyers. Committee Dems said they preferred open session.

Despite the public announcement, Nunes said Thursday that he doesn’t ultimately know if Trump transition members were surveilled.

It is unclear whether Manafort will testify in public.

Nunes said the committee was recalling Comey and Rogers because there were questions they could not answer publicly in an appearance before the committee Monday, during which Comey revealed the existence of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russian Federation. “If he wants to do it in a closed setting, that’s also fine with me”, Nunes said.

The committee also will try to find out whether the intelligence community was ordered to spy on Trump associates and if laws or regulations were violated.

When asked whether the committee would seek to compel testimony from former Trump associate Roger Stone, Nunes said he wasn’t going to call others before the panel based on their appearances in news reports.

Although Mr Nunes has found Mr Trump’s claims he was wire-tapped by the Obama administration to be complete baseless. “We want people to come forward, and we will protect the identity of those people at all costs”.

Schiff said he welcomed Manafort’s testimony but said it should be “done in open session so the public may be informed of what he has to say”.

But even as Nunes announced plans to press ahead with investigating the matter in a more collaborative manner with his colleagues, his Democratic counterpart, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, raised questions about Nunes’ actions thus far.

Page, who the White House has said was only loosely connected to the Trump campaign, emphasized he was not a campaign insider.