Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., made headlines this week when he told reporters the intelligence community incidentally collected information on Donald Trump’s transition team following the Nov. 8 election.
The congressman’s surprise claim raises many questions, including whether the alleged collection was legal and who was involved.
As the issue is a confusing one that likely won’t disappear anytime soon, I’ve compiled a list of the 11 questions you most likely have about this chapter in the ongoing saga involving Trump and the intelligence community:
1. Who is Congressman Devin Nunes?
Nunes is chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee, which has been tasked with investigating Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The California Republican was also named to the Trump transition team in December 2016.
2. What did Nunes actually say?
Members of Trump’s transition team, including possibly Trump himself, were included in surveillance activities following the election, according to Nunes.
The congressman stressed the surveillance collection had nothing to do with Trump’s supposed ties to Russian interests. He added that the White House was not aware of the collection. He also reiterated his position that he doesn’t believe there was a physical wiretap of Trump Tower.
Nunes added he believes the surveillance was legal.
Here he is in his own words:
First, I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.
Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.
Third, I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked.
And forth and finally, I want to be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia, or the investigation of Russian activities, or of the Trump team.
Nunes said he’s seeking answers to several follow-up questions, including “Who was aware of it?” and “Who requested and authorized the additional unmasking?”
3. Where did Nunes get his information?
The congressman has declined to reveal his sources. This is standard in issues involving intelligence collections.
He did say, however, that the, “information was legally brought to me by sources who thought that we should know it.”
Nunes added, “I can say that we’ve been asking for people to come forward. They came through the proper channels and have clearances and I’m just going to leave it at that because we have to protect people who came forward in the right manner. I’m not even going to say it’s one person.”
4. What is incidental collection?
For an answer to this question, we turn to attorney and conservative writer Gabriel Malor.
“‘Incidental collection’ occurs when communications by U.S. citizens to the foreign target of a [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant get snapped up,” he explained shortly after Nunes’ press conference.
It doesn’t mean there was a, “wiretap on Trump,” he added, “and it is not targeted surveillance of Trump or his team.”
“‘Incidental collection,’ [by the way] is what everyone got so het up about in 2014 that led to FISA revision in the USA Freedom Act,” he wrote, adding, “Journalists, do not call it ‘incidental surveillance.’ The term is ‘incidental collection’ precisely [because] it is not surveillance.”
He added, “The two most interesting bits in this Nunes business are that names were unmasked, and that the FISA warrant was not related to Russia. One wonders who members of the Trump team were talking to while under FISA surveillance other than Russians.”
Nunes said Wednesday that the information he saw had, “nothing to do with any criminal investigation.”
“This is normal incidental collection, at least from what I was able to read,” the congressman said.
5. Who in the Trump transition team was involved in the collection?
Nunes has yet to reveal that information.
6. Who did Nunes tell after he learned of the incidental collection?
Nunes told House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., fist. Nunes then told reporters. He then informed the White House.
His Democratic colleagues on the House Select Intelligence Committee learned about it at the same time that the general public heard of it.
7. Does this prove Trump’s claim about being wiretapped?
It depends on whether you take the president literally.
Trump claimed in a series of tweets this month that former President Obama had Trump Tower’s “wires tapped” during the election.
One tweet included quotations around the words “wires” and “tapped,” which White House press secretary Sean Spicer said implied the president was speaking broadly about surveillance in general.
However, another tweet on the matter didn’t use quotation marks: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
A literal reading of the president’s tweets is that Obama had Trump Tower physically bugged. The White House, for its part, claims Trump’s social media posts are more nuanced than that.
On Wednesday, Nunes said there is no evidence to suggest wires were literally tapped in Trump Tower.
“That did not happen. I’ve said this for many, many weeks, including the day after or a couple days after in front of the press. That never happened,” he said.
However, he also said, “there seems to me to be some level of surveillance activity, perhaps legal.”
To be clear, “incidental collection” does not equal “surveillance.”
8. What was Trump’s reaction?
The president said Wednesday he felt “somewhat” vindicated by Nunes’ presser.
“I somewhat do. I must tell you I somewhat do. I very much appreciated the fact that they found what they found,” Trump told a reporter.
9. Who is Adam Schiff?
Schiff is a Democratic congressman from California. He is the ranking Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee.
10. What was Schiff’s reaction to Nunes’ presser?
The congressman sharply criticized Nunes Wednesday for telling reporters and the White House about the incidental collection before telling his Intelligence panel colleagues. Schiff also criticized Nunes for revealing the collection information even as the committee continues to investigate Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.
“The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent 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, because he cannot do both,” Schiff told reporters.
“And unfortunately,” he added, “I think the actions of today throw great doubt into the ability of both the chairman and the committee to conduct the investigation the way it ought to be conducted.”
The congressman was clearly unhappy to be left out of the loop.
“In my conversation late this afternoon, the chairman informed me that most of the names in the intercepted communications were in fact masked, but that he could still figure out the probable identity of the parties,” Schiff said. “This does not indicate that there was any flaw in the procedures followed by the intelligence agencies. Moreover, the unmasking of a U.S. person’s name is fully appropriate when it is necessary to understand the context of collected foreign intelligence information.”
11. Did Nunes really apologize to his Democratic colleagues on the Intelligence panel?
He did, according to Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif.
“Devin Nunes did apologize in a generic way” for failing to inform them first about the collection of information, she told CNN Thursday.
