The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, California Rep. Devin Nunes, confirmed on Wednesday President Donald Trump’s claims that his presidential transition team was spied on by former President Barack Obama’s administration.
The information they gathered was then widely spread throughout the Obama administration, Nunes said.
If evidence is found that Obama had it done intentionally to assist failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which many critics suspect, this could be huge.
In fact, it could lead to Obama being arrested.
According to Nunes, the U.S. intelligence community collected information on members of the Trump transition team incidentally. The information was then “widely disseminated” in intelligence reports.
“I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community collected information on U.S. individuals involved in the Trump transition,” Nunes told reporters. “Details about U.S. persons involved in the incoming administration, with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in intelligence community reports.”
“This information was legally brought to me by sources who thought we should know it,” Nunes said. There were “dozens of reports, but no mention of Russia.”
The revelation comes just after a bombshell committee hearing Tuesday where FBI Director James Comey told Congress there was “no information” that Trump had been wiretapped.
According to Nunes, the wiretap “legally collected foreign intelligence under FISA incidental collection.”
But Nunes also said he was “alarmed” that the information “ended up in reporting channels and was widely disseminated” — and critics are calling for a full investigation into how this happened.
“I’m not gonna get into legal definitions here, but clearly I have a concern” that Obama was spying on Trump, Nunes said.
— The Horn editorial team