House Intel Chairman: Trump Team's Communications Captured By U.S. Surveillance

House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes says then-President elect Trump and members of his transition team were captured by U.S. surveillance as part of "incidental collection" when members of the incoming administration phoned foreigners being watched by American intelligence. That is not a "wiretap" but the White House has a new opening to persist with charges that then-President Obama surveilled Trump in the past.

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Two days after highly publicized congressional testimony widely seen as hurting President Trump, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that held that hearing made charges of his own today. Republican Devin Nunes told reporters he's seen evidence that Trump and his transition team were spied on and that surveillance identified them by name.

NPR's David Welna was there and heard all of this. And David, what is the chairman saying he's actually looked at that suggests Trump and his team were under surveillance after the election?

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Well, Audie, Nunes says some person or persons whom he did not identify have presented him with legally obtained intelligence reports showing there indeed had been such surveillance. Now, Nunes says this was what's called incidental collection, meaning these Trump people were not the subject of the surveillance but were picked up by either communicating with or being talked about by a foreign source being spied on by the U.S. Initially he said Trump was among those whose conversations had been picked up, but then he backed off that a bit, saying he needed to see additional information.

CORNISH: Has the White House or the president responded to all this?

WELNA: Well, Nunes went to the White House this afternoon to tell President Trump about these intercepts, and Trump later told reporters he felt vindicated. But even Nunes, who was on Trump's transition team, isn't saying that this shows Trump's wiretapping claims were true. Here he is speaking to reporters this afternoon at the Capitol.

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DEVIN NUNES: Well, I've always said from day one that there wasn't a physical wiretap of Trump Tower. I still don't have any evidence to show that at all. But clearly there's - I mean what I read was clearly significant information about President-elect Trump and his team. And there were additional names that were unmasked.

WELNA: And I should note that unmasked means that names of U.S. persons that are part of these intercepts are normally masked, but they can be legally unmasked for intelligence analysts to better understand what the conversations were about.

CORNISH: Now this is all coming out because the Intelligence Committee is carrying out what's supposed to be an investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.

WELNA: Right.

CORNISH: Was there any indication today about Russian involvement?

WELNA: Well, Nunes says that what he received had nothing to do with Russia. So these are not the highly publicized intercepts that had former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions talking with the Russian ambassador here in Washington.

CORNISH: David, I understand Chairman Nunes told reporters about all this as well as President Trump before he talked about it with the top Democrat on his own committee. (Laughter) And how's that going over?

WELNA: (Laughter) Not so well. That top Democrat is Adam Schiff. And he called a news conference late this afternoon to say that Nunes' unilateral actions today have cast what Schiff called a profound cloud over our ability to do our work. Schiff said he still wants the committee's investigation to move forward but then added this.

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ADAM SCHIFF: But if you have a chairman who is interacting with the White House and sharing information with the White House when people around the White House are the subject of the investigation and doing so before sharing it with the committee, it make - it throws a profound doubt over whether that can be done credibly.

WELNA: Schiff said he hoped all this is not part of a broader White House campaign aimed at deflecting attention from what the FBI director said earlier this week about investigating possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

CORNISH: That's NPR's David Welna. David, thanks so much.

WELNA: You're welcome, Audie.

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