CAPITOL HILL/WASHINGTON —
Communications of Trump transition officials – and possibly then President-elect Donald Trump – were picked up in the “incidental collection” during routine U.S. monitoring in the months before he took office, a key U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.
Congressman Devin Nunes, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said the conversations were collected in the November-to-January period as Trump and his aides conducted interviews to fill key positions in the new administration and the president-elect talked with foreign leaders for the first time.
Nunes said he believed the intelligence collection was done legally, with the monitored material then “widely disseminated” in intelligence reports. He said the communications did not appear to be related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s ongoing probe of whether Trump campaign aides criminally colluded with Russian interests to help him win last November’s election.
WATCH: Nunes on ‘Incidental Collection’
The lawmaker said an undisclosed source gave him the material after Monday’s intelligence committee hearing at which FBI director James Comey confirmed his agency’s investigation of Russian meddling in the election.
Nunes at first said Trump was picked up on the phone surveillance, but then later said it was only “possible” that Trump’s comments were swept up in the intercepted calls. The U.S. routinely monitors the calls of foreign officials talking with U.S. leaders and it’s possible that is where the “incidental collection” of material occured.
The California congressman said he has asked the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency for their assessment of the intercepts and would do the same with the FBI. He briefed Trump at the White House on the material.
Nunes said he was given a copy of the intelligence collection after making a public appeal at Monday’s hearing if anyone knew of surveillance of the president-elect.
Wiretap allegations
Trump has alleged, without any substantiation, that former president Barack Obama wiretapped his Trump Tower headquarters in New York in the weeks before the election, a claim that Comey said Monday was unfounded.
Asked if he thought that Trump’s transition team had been spied on, Nunes said, “It depends on one’s definition of spying.”
WATCH: Nunes on Legality of Collection
“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the president-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated out in intelligence,” Nunes said. “I want to be clear – none of this surveillance was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team.”
Nunes has repeatedly said that while there was never a physical tap of Trump Tower as Trump has alleged, but that he was concerned other forms of surveillance were used against Trump and his team.
The House Intelligence Committee has asked heads of U.S. intelligence agencies to assist with a “thorough investigation” to determine why the collections were not disclosed to Congress, which requested the collection, why it was authorized and whether any laws were violated.
“I don’t think the administration is aware of this, so I’m going to go over there and tell them what I know,” Nunes said before heading to the White House to talk with Trump.
Nunes said he was “alarmed” by the surveillance of the Trump transition team because it recalled surveillance picking up members of Congress in incidental intelligence collection a year and a half ago.
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