Democratic lawmakers on Monday demanded that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., further explain his secretive meeting on White House grounds, and indicated they are suspicious that the White House used that meeting to reveal to Nunes details about unauthorized surveillance of the Trump transition team.
Democratic members of both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees said Monday that Nunes has not yet shared the information with members of either committee and openly speculated that his meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Building Tuesday night was in service to President Trump.
“Whatever it is he’s done, it has been at the White House. It appears to have been in the service of the White House,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., told CNN Monday morning. Himes, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, labeled Nunes’ actions as “bizarre” and pressed that the California Republican has yet to share information about the meeting with his colleagues on the committee.
“The chairman has told us nothing. The chairman has told the Democrats, the Democrats and the very dedicated staff of the Intelligence Committee… nothing,” Himes said.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee told MSNBC that it is “more than suspicious” that Nunes met his source to review documents on the White House grounds, just a day before he revealed that some of Trump’s team members may have been “unmasked” after being picked up in routine surveillance.
“You can’t make this stuff up. If this was a movie, you’d turn it off because you wouldn’t believe it’s believable,” Warner said. “We don’t know what Mr. Nunes is talking about, what kind of information. We’ve queried the intel community. I don’t think they know what he’s talking about.”
“It seems more than suspicious that he’s somehow going to the White House,” he said. “And then he goes through what appears to be this charade where he comes out the next day and briefs the president before he tells the Democrats. I’m not even sure he’s told the other House Republicans what this ‘information’ was. So it raises a lot of questions.”
Nunes has not fully explained his meeting, but he did confirm it took place.
The Democratic complaints came days after Nunes told Trump, along with House Speaker Paul Ryan, that he had seen “intelligence reports” showing what he believes to be “incidental” surveillance of the transition team during the final months of the Obama administration. Nunes announced that finding before briefing Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff has not commented on Nunes’ meeting on White House grounds.
Nunes’ revelation came only two days after FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers told the committee that there is no evidence that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower, as Trump alleged on March 4.
