He would not say if the letter sent today was in reference to information related just to the five areas of inquiry in the March 15 letter or the broader investigation. The intelligence showed, he said, that Trump was “monitored”.
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If so, Schiff said, he wants to know: “Why weren’t they presented in a more transparent way to the committee?”
CNN reported Monday that Nunes met with his source on White House grounds last Tuesday – one day before revealing briefing the press and Trump on his findings.
That saga exploded last week when Nunes, a California Republican, made what seemed to be a startling disclosure: Intelligence reports he had viewed suggested that intelligence agencies had collected information about people connected to Trump’s presidential transition committee.
The White House said Thursday it was inviting the top-ranking lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees to view materials it said had been uncovered in the course of looking into President Donald Trump’s claims he’d been surveilled by the Obama administration.
“The reports included details about the Trump transition, meetings of Trump and senior advisers, they were distributed throughout the intelligence community and to the White House”, Nunes told reporters last week after FBI Director James Comey testified on Capitol Hill that there was no evidence to support Trump’s claims.
He also filed paperwork after being fired as National Security Adviser indicating that he had acted as an agent for Turkey while serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign previous year. Despite Sean Spicer’s many statements that process didn’t matter during the White House press conference earlier in the afternoon, Schiff made it clear that, especially in a case about how information was leaked, process was all important.
Other Trump associates have volunteered to speak with investigators, but have not publicly raised the issue of immunity.
“This issue is not going to distract us from doing our Russian Federation investigation”. He said officials “have no incentive to see intelligence reports they gather and distribute for national security purposes become fodder in domestic political disputes”. That didn’t stop supporters of Trump from trumpeting her words.
Instead, he confirmed the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating Russian interference in the election and possible Trump campaign collusion since July.
Spicer would not say whether the information now offered to other top level members of intelligence committees was the same that Nunes had seen.
“I can not get into who those individuals were”, Spicer said at the daily news briefing. “It should be the substance”.
Ryan, who serves as the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, shared her reasoning for the gesture on CNN’s New Day.
The Times reported Thursday that Ezra Cohen-Watnick, according to several current U.S. officials, was one of two sources who provided Nunes with the intelligence.
Yet even before Thursday, the view among Democrats and even some Republicans was that Nunes was given access to the intelligence reports to divert attention from the investigations into Russian meddling, and to bolster Trump’s debunked claims of having been wiretapped.
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But the review was recalibrated after Dan Coats – who was confirmed earlier this month as Trump’s intelligence director – vigorously complained about being undermined in the midst of his confirmation hearings, according to US officials. During the hearing, Watts said it was his judgment that Sen.
