As the first of two historic meetings begin today, I thought it worthwhile to revisit the most public revealing of this sordid affair.

On March 22, 2017, after learning of Trump Transition surveillance, Devin Nunes gave an impromptu press conference followed by a more formal press conference (transcripts here).

Like many, I will not soon forget the look of pure shock on Nunes’ face.

Revisiting Nunes’ comments with knowledge of the FBI’s use of private contractors provides new levels of understanding. Some comments relate to the October 21 2016 Carter Page FISA Warrant. Other comments are related to earlier collections. Some relate to more recent unmaskings.

A video of the combined press conferences can be found here.

A partial timeline of events leading to Nunes’ two press conferences is further below.

Comments by Nunes are sequential:

I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.

Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.

The NSA has been very, very helpful. They know how important these programs are, they are in constant communication with our team.

I have spoke to Admiral Rogers about these concerns, and he wants to comply as quickly as he can.

From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don’t know exactly how that was picked up but we’re trying to get to the bottom of it.

I think the NSA’s going to comply. I am concerned – we don’t know whether or not the FBI is going to comply.

I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the President-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated out in intelligence, in what appears to be raw—well I shouldn’t say raw—but intelligence reporting channels.

It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the President-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.

This information was legally brought to me by sources who thought that we should know about it.

This is normal incidental collection. It was normal foreign surveillance.

This appears to be all legally collected foreign intelligence under FISA, where there was incidental collection that then ended up in reporting channels and was widely disseminated.

We went through this about a year and a half ago as it related to members of Congress…it’s very similar to that, it reminds me of what happened a year and a half ago.

It’s official IC information. These were intelligence reports. It brings up a lot of concerns about whether things were properly minimized or not.

We don’t know who sent the taskings, if the taskings were changed into what went into these intelligence reports.

The President himself and others in the Trump transition team were clearly put into intelligence reports that ended up in this White House and across a whole bunch of other agencies.

There’s two issues here. There’s additional unmasking of names…I don’t know how many names were unmasked, but I know these additional unmaskings occurred. And then we have the additional issue of the names that were put into these intelligence reports.

I was able to determine that it looks like it was legal collection, incidental collection, that made its way into intelligence reports. It has to do with FISA, and there are multiple FISA warrants that are out there.

On March 31, 2017 a Fox News report by Adam Housley cited numerous unnamed intelligence sources with direct knowledge of events:

We’ve learned that the surveillance that led to the unmasking started way before President Trump was even the GOP nominee. The person who did the unmasking, I’m told, is very well known, very high up, very senior in the intelligence world and is not in the FBI.

This led to other surveillance which led to multiple names being unmasked. Again these are private citizens in the United States.

We’re told that the main issue here is not only the unmasking of the names, but the spreading of names for political purposes that have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team.

This is all coming from folks that are in these agencies and frustrated with the politics that is taking place in these agencies.

The FBI and the NSD didn’t need a wiretap. They already had multiple points of access in their systems. They just had to be willing to use these access points – or have someone else use them – to harvest the NSA upstream data.

The FISA Court ruling tells us they did this. It doesn’t tell us the targets.

We know from FISA Court documents that information was being gathered through illegal “About” queries – and had little or nothing to do with National Security. They were unauthorized, specifically related to U.S. persons and were the result of deliberate decision-making.

We know the FBI employed independent contractors – some to seemingly gather political opposition research using “About” queries from late 2015 through April 18, 2016.

Once the process had been stopped – and was now potentially exposed – the FBI & NSD decided what to do with the previously gathered information.

The idea of a Dossier was formulated. It provided three purposes.

It became a repository of information already gathered – and was augmented with information from Brennan & the Clinton Campaign. It became a means to ultimately obtain legal permission for the previously illegal methods by which the information had been gathered. It allowed for the continuation of information gathering after Rogers shut Section 702 “About” searches down – through the FISA warrant on Carter Page.

The Steele Dossier became the repository of information gathered from illegal Section 702 searches while at the same time transforming that information into outside evidence that could be used in obtaining a FISA warrant to legitimize…the original information.

It became “legal” to maintain surveillance on the Trump Campaign using earlier data that originated with “incidental” capture of U.S. persons in the collection of data on non-U.S. persons.

Spygate.

For a look at the various players see, A Listing of Participants.

For an examination of the FBI’s use of private contractors see, The Uncovering – Mike Rogers’ Investigation, Section 702 FISA Abuse & the FBI.

The following timeline is a subset of a much larger timeline that remains a work in progress. Intentionally pruned and truncated, it provides a detailing of recent events leading up towards Nunes’ discovery:

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