California Rep. Adam Schiff alleged Sunday that President Trump knowingly spread false information about there being an FBI spy within his campaign.

Trump wrote on Twitter last week that it would be “bigger than Watergate” if there was an “embedded informant” on the campaign, and tweeted a quote that "Apparently the DOJ put a Spy in the Trump Campaign." Subsequent reporting indicated the informant was Cambridge University professor Stefan Halper, who met with campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, and with Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis.

Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence Committee, said on “Meet the Press” that Trump intentionally exaggerated early reports of an informant on the campaign.

“This claim by the president, this suggestion by [Trump lawyer Rudy] Giuliani is that there is a political spy embedded in the Trump campaign is nonsense,” Schiff said. “And you hear it in the same terms that Trump often speaks, which is ‘people are saying’ or ‘I'm hearing’ or ‘we're being told’. That's another way of saying this is patently untrue, but we would like to spread it anyway. And it's singularly destructive of our institutions, but that's the point.”

Host Chuck Todd said “in fairness of the president and his supporters, they look at the history of this informant. They see that he was involved in political campaigns and even possibly political espionage in 1980 and they think, ‘Why shouldn't they be suspicious of this?’”

Schiff side-stepped the question, saying, “I can't comment on the identity of any individual or source, but I can say this. This is part of a string of meritless allegations from the very beginning that 'I was wiretapped in Trump Tower', there is a vast unmasking conspiracy, the investigation began with the Christopher Steele dossier -- all of which is was untrue, all of which ... is designed to create this alternate reality for Trump supporters.”