Nunes: “The FBI Is Not Cooperating With Our Investigation Into Trump Wiretapping”

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, Devin Nunes said in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

In the aftermath of today’s most stunning news report, namely the confirmation that Trump may have been right all along following the admission of House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes that the communications of Trump’s aides and the president himself had been “incidentally” monitored, Nunes held an explosive press conference outside the White House in which 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.

Nunes said that he had briefed the president about his concerns over the “incidental” collection of data, adding that the president “needs to know” that these intel reports exist, and adding ominously that “some of what I’ve seen seems to be inappropriate.”

Nunes also said that Trump, others in the transition team were put into the intelligence report and asked if Trump should be in these “normal” reports.

But what was perhaps most troubling in Nunes presser is that in the aftermath of Monday’s Congressional hearing with James Comey in which the FBI director said on the record there had been no surveillance of Trump, is the House Intel Commission chair’s statement that the FBI is not cooperating with the investigation.

“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.

Finally, 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.” As a reminder, this has been the strawman argument proposed by much of the liberal media, which has said that a wiretapping of Trump or his aides, would only confirm that his relations with Russia were suspect and thus prompted a FISA warrant.

If Nunes is correct, and Trump was being wiretapped for reasons having nothing to do with Russia, that entire narrative falls apart, and the press will now have to spend the next few weeks building up an entirely new narrative to “justify” why Trump was being wiretapped on Obama’s watch.