House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes on Thursday defended his telling President Trump about new surveillance findings of Trump campaign members. He said he was only acting on an “obligation” to the commander in chief.
“I would be concerned if I was the president and that’s why I wanted him to know and I felt like I had a duty and obligation to tell him because as you know, he’s taking a lot of heat in the news media and I think to some degree there are some things he should look at to see whether in fact, he thinks the collection was proper or not,” Nunes told Fox News host Sean Hannity in a pre-taped interview set to air late Thursday.
On Wednesday, Nunes traveled to the White House and informed Trump that his committee had found evidence that the identities of several campaign staffers had been unmasked and published in intelligence reports.
The California Republican said the dissemination of those federal agency’s findings were “pretty far and wide.” In addition, Trump’s personal communications may have been documented in those findings, which Nunes would not rule out on Thursday.
“And I will say, as I have said before, it appears to me that it was all legal, but the question is, should have it been done in the first place? Did it meet foreign intelligence value? And then secondly, were any other Americans names unmasked? And I have information that says that there were,” Nunes added.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer has denied that the executive branch leaked information to Nunes so that he could then brief them on it.
