A top House Democrat is calling for an investigation into House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes for telling the White House about new information that President Trump and his associates might have been caught up in government surveillance.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said on CNN Thursday that Nunes shouldn't have gone to the press and then briefed Trump about an investigation where Trump is a subject. Cummings said Nunes compromised the independence of his investigation into alleged collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia by doing so.

"The intelligence committee is a very special committee, they are privy to information most of the Congress may never see. You expect them to be extremely confidential," Cummings said.

"What he did was basically to go to the president, who's being investigated by the FBI and others and by the intelligence committee, to give him information. Basically what he has done is he has scuttled and put a cloud over his own investigation, and he has become the subject, basically, or he should be, of his own investigation."

Democrat @repcummings: By briefing POTUS, @DevinNunes "scuttled and put a cloud over his own investigation" https://t.co/rflYKrdBu7— New Day (@NewDay) March 23, 2017



Nunes held a press conference Wednesday afternoon to announce that the federal government had spied on members of the Trump transition team, and possibly the president himself, and "unmasked" them, or identified them. He said conversations between members of the team and people who were being spied on under legally obtained warrants were then widely disseminated.

Trump has used this report to justify his claim that President Obama ordered him to be spied on directly during the election, even though Nunes said he still has no evidence of that claim.