The head of the House Intelligence Committee met with a White House source the day before he announced publicly that President Trump may have been “incidentally monitored” by US intelligence agencies after the election, according to a report Monday.
“Chairman [Devin] Nunes met with his source at the White House grounds in order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source,” his spokesman, Jack Langer, confirmed to NBC News. “The chairman is extremely concerned by the possible improper unmasking of names of U.S. citizens, and he began looking into this issue even before President Trump tweeted his assertion that (Trump Tower) had been wiretapped.”
Nunes (R-Calif.) told CNN on Monday that he had been on the grounds “to confirm what I already knew,” but declined to elaborate so he wouldn’t “compromise sources and methods.”
Nunes, whose committee is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, told reporters last Wednesday that he had information that showed Trump and his aides may have been swept up in surveillance of foreign government officials by US spy agencies.
He was criticized for taking the unusual step of bypassing members of his House committee before briefing Trump on the information and for the timing of the announcement.
It came a day after FBI Director James Comey told Nunes’ panel that his agency was investigating possible “coordination” between Trump aides and Moscow. Comey also said he had no evidence to support Trump’s allegation that former President Obama authorized the wiretapping.
“What I’ve read bothers me, and I think it should bother the president himself and his team,” Nunes said outside the White House on Wednesday.
Nunes, who was part of Trump’s transition team, said the monitoring was not connected to Russia and he couldn’t provide evidence supporting the president’s claim that he was personally wiretapped at Trump Tower.
He wouldn’t tell reporters who provided the intelligence reports and identified them only as people who had security clearances.
Afterward, Trump said the revelations “somewhat” vindicated him.
“I very much appreciated the fact that they found what they found,” the president said.
The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which also is investigating Russia’s involvement in the election, said Nunes’ visit is “more than suspicious.”
“Who is he meeting with?” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told Politico on Monday. “Was it a source or was it somebody from the administration? And then he goes through this, what appears to be a charade, where he comes out the next day and briefs the president before he tells the Democrats.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, questioned Nunes’ motivation to go out of his way to try to support Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations.
“This is deeply troubling,” Schiff (D-Calif.) said last week.