House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community collected multiple conversations involving members of Donald Trump’s transition team after he won the election last year.
He said the intercepts he’s seen appear to be legal and weren’t targeted at the transition team or related to an investigation of Russia’s attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election. But he said he was troubled by the collection — which he described as part of unrelated foreign surveillance — and that the intelligence community reported the names of transition team members internally.
“I’m actually alarmed by it,” Nunes, a California Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. “Details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in an intelligence community report,” he said. He said he didn’t know if Trump’s “own communications were intercepted.”
The disclosure may bolster Trump’s effort to back up his disputed claim in Twitter postings that former President Barack Obama tapped his phones, which his spokesman later said shouldn’t be taken literally and referred generally to having his team under surveillance. FBI Director James Comey testified before the House committee this week that “I have no information that supports those tweets.”
It was previously disclosed that U.S. intelligence agencies had picked up conversations between Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, and the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before Trump’s inauguration. Flynn was fired in February after making contradictory statements to Vice President Mike Pence about those discussions.
Republicans on Nunes’ committee have zeroed in on leaks of intelligence information to counter Democrats’ focus on the intelligence agencies’ continuing investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s presidential campaign. Comey testified that the probe “includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
Nunes said he’s informed House Speaker Paul Ryan of the new information, “and I will be going to the White House this afternoon to share what I know with the president and his team.”
BOMBSHELL?: Nunes Says Trump’s Transition Team Was Under Surveillance – WATCH – https://t.co/Kx4cZLWMn1 pic.twitter.com/RqD4C5JhWj
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 22, 2017
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said he didn’t know more than what Nunes said at the Capitol but the administration will comment after Nunes provides his briefing. “I do think this is a startling revelation,” he told reporters.
Nunes said he expects to learn more on Friday. His panel asked U.S. intelligence agencies for details on members of Trump’s team whose communications may have been intercepted by U.S. spy agencies.
“If the Trump campaign’s conversations are caught up in surveilling a foreign agent, there are rules about what you can release and who you can unmask,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters. “That’s different than having the Obama administration surveil the Trump campaign.”
In a separate development Wednesday, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee joined with the top Democrat on the panel to ask the Trump administration to turn over all documents detailing Flynn’s contacts with, and payments from foreign sources, including people connected to the Kremlin.
Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, asked for all relevant documents by April 3.
Flynn is facing new scrutiny for previously undisclosed work benefiting the interests of the Turkish government.
Chaffetz and Cummings are seeking documents related to Flynn’s security clearance applications and contacts and payments from Russian, Turkish and any other foreign sources including the Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, dating from Flynn’s 2014 retirement from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the present. They also want documents connected to Flynn’s vetting for the national security post, his work with a speaker’s bureau and any documentation that Flynn sought U.S. approvals for payments from foreign sources.
Democrats on the House committee last week released documents showing Flynn received more than $45,000 from RT for taking part in a December 2015 gala where he sat at President Vladimir Putin’s table.
Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, said the retired lieutenant general “both informed and fully briefed” the Defense Intelligence Agency about his Russia trip beforehand and when he returned.
Other documents showed that Flynn received $11,250 for a 2015 speaking engagement in Washington for Kaspersky Government Security Solutions, Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of a Russian cybersecurity firm; and an $11,250 payment from Volga-Dnepr Airlines.
(c) 2017, Bloomberg · Billy House, Margaret Talev, Jennifer Jacobs
