House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., wrote a letter to fellow GOP chairmen on Monday — the second in recent days — encouraging their joint task force to interview 10 people who served in the White House or State Department under the Obama administration relevant to the panel's investigation of potential surveillance abuse during the 2016 election.

Included in the list, sent to House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., is former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan Winer, who in February admitted that the author of the infamous “Trump dossier," ex-British spy Christopher Steele, gave him intelligence reports claiming to show collusion between President Trump’s campaign and the Russians.

The dossier has become a flash point of controversy among Republicans. A memo released by House Intelligence Committee Republicans in February alleged the DOJ and FBI sought the authority to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page using the dossier, which had been funded in part by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. While the GOP memo found that agents failed to disclose to a federal judge that Steele's research had Democratic benefactors, a Democratic rebuttal memo argued that the FBI did tell the judge that Steele was likely looking to "discredit" Trump.

Also on Nunes' list is Shailagh Murray, who served as an adviser to former President Barack Obama. Murray's husband, Neil King Jr., left the Wall Street Journal in late 2016 and migrated to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier.

Another former official mentioned is Colin Kahl, who worked as a national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Previously, Kahl served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

Both Murray and Kahl were among the 20-plus current and former government officials sent a 10-question survey earlier this year as part of the intelligence panel's dossier probe.

Nunes announced right after the release of the memo on alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that he was in the middle of what he called "phase two" of his investigation, which involved agencies beyond the DOJ and FBI. “Specifically the State Department and some of the involvement they had in this," he told Fox News at the time.

In the letter he sent Monday, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, Nunes pushes Gowdy and Goodlatte to reach out to the 10 Obama-era State and White House officials because they may "have relevant information" that may fall under the purview of their joint task force.

“For the sake of transparency and to keep the American people as fully informed as possible about these matters, the task force should consider interviewing these individuals in an open setting,” Nunes wrote.

The letter's language is similar to one Nunes sent on Friday to Gowdy and Goodlatte, encouraging them to engage 17 current and former Justice Department and FBI officials, also for information on potential government surveillance abuse.

