House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on Thursday said he was right to tell the White House before committee members that he had new evidence suggesting potentially improper surveillance of President Trump and associates.
“Because it was going to be so politically charged, I just decided look, at the end of the day, I have a responsibility to inform the White House,” Nunes said. “We oversee the agencies, and what I saw in those reports concerned me enough that [the president] should be able to read those.”
The House Intelligence chairman, a California Republican, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner that Trump deserved to know that communications by him and his White House transition team were monitored and collected by U.S. intelligence leading up to his Jan. 20 inauguration.
Nunes also made clear that he had not apologized to Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee for keeping them in the dark. Nunes said that he didn’t want Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat, or his colleagues, publicly sandbagging him before he presented his findings.
“I still think I made the right decision,” he added.
Nunes, who served on Trump’s transition, hustled down to the White House on Wednesday to brief the president personally on the “dozens” of “intelligence reports” he has viewed but does not yet possess, although he expects to receive documentation from the NSA as early as Friday.
Nunes described the surveillance as “legal” and “incidental.” But the chairman also stressed that it struck him as improper and “out of bounds,” not to mention his longstanding concern that some of those communications were illegally leaked to the press in a direct attempt to sabotage Trump.
Nunes said it troubled him enough that he detailed his concerns to the media, and then Trump, even though he assumed he’d be accused of misusing intelligence to throw the president a lifeline after the FBI and NSA dismissed Trump’s claims that former President Barack Obama illegally wiretapped him.
Nunes said he briefed House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and a few GOP members of the Intelligence Committee, prior to holding a press conference and briefing Trump.
“Just because you have legal collection doesn’t mean that names are masked properly and the minimization done to protect American citizens is done properly. It caught me as being a little out of bounds,” Nunes said. “There was an additional unmasking of names that had to have been requested by someone and after reviewing the report, I’m not sure why that name was unmasked.”
The chairman said that the intelligence in question did not reveal Trump officials communicating with Russian operatives, nor has any information he has reviewed so far during the Intelligence Committee’s investigation indicated that Trump or his associates colluded with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to defeat Hillary Clinton.
If anything, the only wrongdoing discovered is likely the handiwork of Obama and Clinton loyalists in the Intelligence Community, or possibly the previous White House, who participated in improper leaks, Nunes believes. On that basis, Nunes sees no grounds to turn his investigation over to a special counsel or a special House select committee.
“I see no evidence … There’s no collusion that I’ve seen that ties anything to anyone in the White House. So, what are you going to have a special counsel for?” Nunes said.
