‘Spying’ claim renews fight – US foreign surveillance unmasked Trump associates: lawmaker

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US President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence meets with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Wednesday on March 22, in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington. (AP)

WASHINGTON, March 23, (Agencies): The chairman of the House intelligence committee says private communications of Donald Trump and his presidential transition team may have been scooped up by American intelligence officials monitoring other targets and improperly distributed throughout spy agencies. Republican Rep Devin Nunes’ extraordinary public airing Wednesday of often-secret information brought swift protests from Democrats.

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff, renewed his party’s calls for an independent probe of Trump campaign links to Russia in addition to the GOP-led panel’s investigation. Schiff also said he had seen “more than circumstantial evidence” that Trump associates colluded with Russia. In back-to-back news conferences at the Capitol and then the White House — where he had privately briefed the president — Nunes said he was concerned by officials’ handling of the communications in the waning days of the Obama administration. He said the surveillance was conducted legally and did not appear to be related to the current FBI investigation into Trump associates’ contacts with Russia or with any criminal warrants. And the revelations, he said, did nothing to change his assessment that Trump’s explosive allegations about wiretaps at Trump Tower were false. Still, the White House immediately seized on his statements in what appeared to be a coordinated public display.

Moments after Nunes spoke on Capitol Hill, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer read his statements from the White House briefing room podium. The California congressman quickly headed up Pennsylvania Avenue to personally brief the president and to address reporters outside the West Wing. Nunes’ decision to brief the president was particularly unusual, given Trump almost certainly has access to the information from his intelligence agencies.

Democrats denounced Nunes’ statements as highly unusual from the chairman of an intelligence committee, with the top Democrat on the committee saying its members had not been informed and implying that Nunes was giving political cover to the president.

Collected
Intelligence reports about the communications appeared to “unmask” the identity of the Trump associates and the names were widely shared among the agencies, Nunes said. He said it was possible Trump’s own communications were also collected. The National Security Agency routinely collects electronic communications on foreigners through a variety of surveillance tools. But information about Americans is also sometimes incidentally gathered, such as when someone is communicating to a foreign target.

Typically the names of Americans are made anonymous, or masked, in foreign intelligence reports unless an intelligence agency determines the identity of that person is relevant to national security or a criminal investigation. It was unclear why the reports Nunes cited contained unmasked names. A US government source said it was logical, if not normal, that communications from Trump aides would have been incidentally intercepted by US agencies after his election, given that they would have an interest in talking to foreign governments. Trump took office on Jan 20. Two days ago, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, told a hearing of Nunes’ committee that his agency was conducting a criminal investigation of potential links between Trump associates and Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 US election to benefit Trump.

Intelligence “I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community … collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition,” said Nunes, who was himself on Trump’s transition team. Nunes said he was referring to intelligence reports of communications collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “I want to be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team,” he said. Trump said he felt “somewhat” vindicated by Nunes’ announcement after being briefed by Nunes. FBI head Comey on Monday said that Trump’s claims were groundless.

According to Nunes, the conversations in question were collected legally in November, December and January. In an interview with CNN, the committee’s leading Democrat, Adam Schiff said, “The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he’s going to act as a surrogate of the White House, because he cannot do both.” Nunes’ remarks appeared tied to a line of questioning from Republicans during Monday’s hearing about the importance of identifying and prosecuting those responsible for intelligence leaks.

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