Nunes has since accused Obama officials of improperly “unmasking” Trump associates who were caught up in conversations involving individuals under surveillance.

The names of Americans are typically redacted in such reports unless an official makes a request to reveal or “unmask” them; that request is then assessed and granted or denied by the agencies that produced the intelligence, based on whether unmasking would be necessary to better understand the material. Nunes’s assertions came weeks after Trump first charged in a series of tweets—without evidence— that Obama had his phones tapped at Trump Tower. The president’s claim was refuted by former FBI Director James Comey in congressional testimony before Trump fired him last month.

At the time, Speaker Paul Ryan tasked Representative Mike Conaway of Texas to temporarily take over the Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election while the Ethics Committee looked into the claims against Nunes. (The committee has not completed its investigation and would not comment on Thursday.)

But Ryan chose not to strip Nunes of his chairmanship of the committee, and as chairman he retains the right to issue subpoenas without the consent of Democrats or the full committee. “That authority should have been delegated to Mike Conaway in consultation with myself. That hasn’t happened yet,” the top Democrat on the committee, Representative Adam Schiff of California, said Thursday on MSNBC. “And I think that’s a violation of the recusal by the chairman.”

Conaway and Schiff announced in a joint statement on Wednesday that they had issued subpoenas to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and to Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer. But committee aides confirmed that three other subpoenas were sent to the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA for information related to the unmasking of Trump campaign officials.

Those subpoenas were unusual because congressional committees typically request documents from government departments and only seek to compel them with subpoenas if they do not cooperate. The committee had given no indication that the intelligence community was uncooperative, and Schiff said Nunes never consulted him before issuing the subpoenas. That in itself would be a violation of the committee’s rules, which give the chairman subpoena power but only “upon consultation with the ranking minority member or a full vote of the committee.”

A spokesman for Nunes would not comment beyond a tweet the chairman sent on Thursday afternoon, which said: “Seeing a lot of fake news from media elites and others who have no interest in violations of Americans' civil liberties via unmaskings.” At a fundraiser in California last weekend, Nunes accused Democrats of wanting to “destroy” the Russia investigation because they are trying to advance the narrative that collusion between Trump and Vladmir Putin is the reason why Hillary Clinton lost. That is the same argument that Trump has advanced repeatedly in the last several weeks as the multiple investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia have gained steam. On Thursday morning, the president tweeted: “The big story is the ‘unmasking and surveillance’ of people that took place during the Obama Administration.”