Evidence Appearing Supporting Trump Surveillance Claim?

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes declared Wednesday that members of Donald Trump’s transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under inadvertent surveillance following November’s presidential election.

The White House and Trump’s allies immediately seized on the statement as vindication of the president’s much-maligned claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower phones — even though Nunes himself said that’s not what his new information shows.

‘ALARMED’ AS DETAILS WIDELY DISSEMINATED…

Almost two weeks after President Donald Trump’s tweets accusing his predecessor of wiretapping Trump Tower, the Republican head of the House Intelligence Committee tried to offer some support by saying that the president’s team was caught up in a U.S. surveillance net.

Representative Devin Nunes said Wednesday that the intelligence community collected multiple conversations involving members of Trump’s transition team during legal surveillance of foreign targets after he won election last year. After Nunes went to the White House to brief Trump, the president told reporters “I somewhat do” feel vindicated by the latest development.

The committee’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, said Nunes’s decision to go to Trump before informing other members of the panel “casts quite a profound cloud” over whether the committee can conduct a proper investigation.

Nunes said he was “alarmed” to discover that the identities of Trump aides were revealed in intelligence community documents. “Details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in an intelligence community report,” he said, adding that he didn’t know if Trump’s “own communications were intercepted.”

Trump said after meeting with Nunes, “I very much appreciate the fact that they found what they found.”

Dem ‘grave concerns’ over claim…

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that he has “grave concerns” over Chairman Devin Nunes’s (R-Calif.) handling of the Trump Tower wiretapping investigation.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) criticized Nunes for his surprise announcement earlier in the day that he had seen intelligence intercepts that showed authorities had incidentally gathered information on members of the Trump transition team during investigations that the chairman said were not related to Russia.

Nunes made the announcement at a press conference, saying the information had been “widely disseminated” in an implicit criticism of intelligence community officials.

He then briefed the White House about his findings and appeared on CNN — without talking to Schiff, who knocked the chairman for not sharing the information.

“If accurate, this information should have been shared with members of the committee, but it has not been,” Schiff said in a statement that criticized Nunes for a “profound irregularity” in how he had handled the situation.

FBI NOT COOPERATING…

The FBI is not cooperating with the House of Representatives’ investigation into the NSA’s surveillance of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, the chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), said today.

During an explosive press conference outside the White House, Nunes told reporters that communications from the Trump team were picked up and disseminated within the government during the 2016 campaign. Nunes said sources within the intelligence community presented him with the information. He spoke to the press after briefing the administration.

“We don’t actually know yet officially what happened to General Flynn,” Nunes said of how communications from Gen. Flynn’s calls were leaked to the press. “We just know that his name leaked out but we don’t know how it was picked up yet. That was one of the things that we asked for in the March 15th letter, was for the NSA, CIA, and FBI to get us all the unmasking that was done.”

“And I’ll tell you, NSA is being cooperative,” Nunes continued, “but so far the FBI has not told us whether or not they’re going to respond to our March 15th letter, which is now a couple of weeks old.”

Nunes also reported that as of now, he “cannot rule out” President Obama ordering the surveillance.

And contrary to earlier media reports, Nunes clarified that the surveillance was not related to the FBI’s investigation into possible collusion with Russia. This surveillance, he emphasized to reporters, does not “have anything to do with Russia.”