California Rep. Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, stepped into the spotlight on Wednesday.

He declared at a press conference that he had come upon information that suggested U.S. intelligence agencies might have picked up communications by then-President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team last year. Nunes implied that this discovery gave credence to Trump's now-infamous March 4 claim that former President Barack Obama had "wiretapped" Trump Tower, an allegation FBI Director James Comey debunked on Monday.

But Nunes' announcement proved a transitory diversion, as once again new developments popped up related to the investigation of alleged ties between Trump's campaign and Russian officials seeking to sow chaos in the U.S. electoral process. Trump critics believe the president's accusations against Obama were meant to distract attention from the investigation.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have owned the Russia-Trump story so far, mining well-placed sources in the U.S. intelligence community. But on Wednesday it was CNN that landed the big headline of the day. The cable-news outlet's report opened with this stunning statement:

"The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, U.S. officials told CNN."

During the campaign last fall, the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks dribbled out hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. It is widely believed Russian operatives provided the emails to WikiLeaks in an effort to damage Clinton's campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to see Clinton defeated, believing she tried to undermine his rule when she was U.S. secretary of state.

The information leaked to CNN this week, unlike Nunes' intelligence leak, could be a real bombshell -- if, that is, it turns out to be true. "One law enforcement official," CNN reported, "said the information in hand suggests 'people connected to the campaign were in contact [with Russian operatives] and it appeared they were giving the thumbs up to release information when it was ready.'"

It must be noted that we're still in the realm of anonymous sources. And that the evidence, whatever it actually might be, is still reportedly circumstantial.

But national-security experts with deeply established relationships in the U.S. intelligence community are beginning to suggest we're no longer in the early stages of an amorphous, hydra-like investigation. That instead we're approaching the end game of an unprecedented scandal.

John Schindler, a conservative columnist for the New York Observer and a former National Security Agency analyst, declared on Twitter that "Trump will be forced out & his cronies will be indicted. Get ready."

The TS intel is devastating, as I've told you. Trump will be forced out & his cronies will be indicted. Get ready.https://t.co/3rcmSEziYm — John Schindler (@20committee) March 23, 2017

Such rumblings in the intelligence community just might send Nunes, a Trump backer who was part of Trump's transition team, into panic mode. There is, after all, no good explanation for his actions on Wednesday. He is the head of a congressional committee investigating the president's campaign and related associates, but instead of sharing his newly found information with his colleagues on the intelligence committee -- or even checking it with the FBI, which is conducting its own investigation -- he rushed to the White House to brief Trump and then called a press conference.

Then there's the fact that the newly discovered intelligence that had Nunes "steaming" mad on Wednesday apparently doesn't amount to much. In fact, it actually ends up looking kind of bad for the president -- and suggests Nunes is in over his head on the intelligence committee.

"This is a normal, incidental collection, based on what I could collect," Nunes admitted. "This appears to be all legally collected foreign intelligence under [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]."

Normal, incidental intelligence collection is not what Trump said in his now-infamous tweets about Obama. And it implies that Trump or his associates were talking to foreign agents who were legally under surveillance by U.S. intelligence. It also means Nunes might have leaked classified information in an attempt to provide cover for the president.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, slapped Nunes hard for his freelancing. "The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House, because he cannot do both," Schiff said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican who has been critical of Trump, has already reached his own conclusion about Nunes' ability to lead the House investigation into the matter. On Wednesday he called for a special independent committee, or even an independent prosecutor, to take over the investigation.

"What the American people have found out so far [is that] no longer does the Congress have the credibility to handle this alone," McCain told MSNBC. "And I don't say that lightly."

-- Douglas Perry