posted 03-22-2017 02:41 PM                  

The truth is the truth even if you don't believe its the truth.

This statement is now false according to the political parties and the FBI and of course Gort.

The swamp will never be drained. lol

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House intelligence committee said Wednesday that the communications of Trump transition officials — possibly including President Donald Trump himself — may have been "monitored" after the election as part of an "incidental collection."
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the intercepted communications do not appear to be related to the ongoing FBI investigation into Trump associates' contacts with Russia. He said he believes the intelligence collections were done legally.

posted 03-22-2017 02:55 PM                  

By Austin Wright
|
03/22/17 01:19 PM EDT
|
Updated 03/22/17 03:28 PM EDT

¤c Share on Facebook ¤d Share on Twitter

Members of the Donald Trump transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under U.S. government surveillance following November¡¯s presidential election, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters Wednesday.

Nunes said the monitoring appeared to be done legally as a result of what's called "incidental collection," but said he was concerned because it was not related to the FBI¡¯s investigation into Russia¡¯s meddling in the election and was widely disseminated across the intelligence community.

.
¡°I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show that the president-elect and his team were, I guess, at least monitored,¡± Nunes told reporters. ¡°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.¡±

Nunes said he is heading to the White House later Wednesday to brief Trump on what he has learned, which he said came from ¡°sources who thought that we should know it.¡± He said he was trying to get more information by Friday from the FBI, CIA and NSA.

Nunes described the surveillance as most likely being ¡°incidental collection.¡± This can occur when a person inside the United States communicates with a foreign target of U.S. surveillance. In such cases, the identities of U.S. citizens are supposed to be kept secret ¡ª but can be ¡°unmasked¡± by intelligence officials under certain circumstances.

Nunes said his new information appears to show that additional members of the Trump transition team ¡ª beyond former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn ¡ª were unmasked. This means they were identified in U.S. intelligence reports.

He said the information that he had seen and was disseminated across the intelligence community appeared to him to have "little or no apparent intelligence value."

He also said he did not know yet whether the Trump transition team members who were unmasked were communicating from Trump Tower. Earlier this month, Trump claimed in a series of Tweets that former President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of the phones at Trump Tower ¡ª something Nunes reiterated on Wednesday he had no evidence of.

Democratic Rep. David Cicilline knocked Nunes on Twitter for his decision to brief the White House on his findings ¡ª noting that Nunes is leading a congressional investigation into possible collusion between the Trump team and Russia.

¡°Investigators are not supposed to ¡®brief¡¯ the folks being investigated,¡± the Rhode Island congressman said.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, Nunes¡¯ Democratic counterpart on the intelligence panel, was not informed of the news ahead of Nunes¡¯ press conference on Wednesday, according to a Schiff spokesman.

Nunes said he briefed House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on the information on Wednesday morning.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer read from Nunes' statement during his opening remarks at a press briefing Wednesday, showing how eager Trump's team was to amplify the remarks.

Spicer said he was concerned about Trump transition team members being unmasked.

¡°An American citizen who's caught up in a surveillance has, by rule of law, has their name protected,¡± he told reporters. ¡°The idea that individuals' names were unmasked and let known suggests ¡ª raises serious questions. Why was that name unmasked, what was the intention of doing that?¡±

The Intelligence panel is set to hold a public hearing next Tuesday with members of the Obama administration, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump in January after refusing to defend his first travel ban executive order in court.

They are almost certain to face questions on the matter.

FBI Director James Comey appeared before the panel on Monday and confirmed that the FBI launched a counterintelligence investigation in July into Russia¡¯s election meddling, including possible coordination with the Trump campaign.

It was previously known that Flynn¡¯s pre-inauguration phone calls with Russia¡¯s ambassador were intercepted by the U.S. government; he resigned last month after it became clear he misled his colleagues about the nature of the calls.

Nunes has said Flynn¡¯s calls were picked up through incidental collection and said his committee is investigating why Flynn¡¯s name was unmasked and leaked to the news media.

posted 03-22-2017 02:59 PM                  

Nunes Says Trump Team Conversations Caught in Surveillance

by
Billy House
➞
,
Margaret Talev
➞
, and
Jennifer Jacobs
➞

Wednesday, March 22, 2017 1:26:51 PM Updated on Wednesday, March 22, 2017 3:22:14 PM

➞
Republican says ‘I’m actually alarmed’ conversations picked up

➞
Disclosure may bolster Trump’s claim he was under surveillance

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community collected multiple conversations involving members of Donald Trump’s transition team after he won the election last year.

After making his disclosure at the Capitol, Nunes headed to the White House to brief the president on what he had learned. Trump then told reporters gathered for an unrelated event that “I somewhat do” feel vindicated by the latest development. “I very much appreciate the fact that they found what they found.”

Nunes said that intercepts he’s seen appear to be legal and weren’t targeted at Trump’s transition team or related to an investigation of Russia’s attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election. But he said he was troubled by the collection -- which he described as part of unrelated foreign surveillance -- and that the intelligence community reported the names of transition team members internally.

“I’m actually alarmed by it,” Nunes, a California Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. “Details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in an intelligence community report,” he said. He said he didn’t know if Trump’s “own communications were intercepted.”

The disclosure may bolster Trump’s effort to back up his disputed claim in Twitter postings that former President Barack Obama tapped his phones, which his spokesman later said shouldn’t be taken literally and referred generally to having his team under surveillance. FBI Director James Comey testified before the House committee this week that “I have no information that supports those tweets.”

Nunes told reporters outside the White House, after briefing the president, that “it is possible” Trump’s tweets were correct concerning surveillance.

It was previously disclosed that U.S. intelligence agencies had picked up conversations between Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, and the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before Trump’s inauguration. Flynn was fired in February after making contradictory statements to Vice President Mike Pence about those discussions.

Republicans on Nunes’s committee have zeroed in on leaks of intelligence information to counter Democrats’ focus on the intelligence agencies’ continuing investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s presidential campaign. Comey testified that the probe “includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

Nunes said he’d informed House Speaker Paul Ryan of the new information.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said before Nunes spoke with Trump that he didn’t know more than what the chairman said at the Capitol but the administration would comment later. “I do think this is a startling revelation," he told reporters.

Nunes also said he expects to learn more on Friday. His panel asked U.S. intelligence agencies for details on members of Trump’s team whose communications may have been intercepted by U.S. spy agencies.

"If the Trump campaign’s conversations are caught up in surveilling a foreign agent, there are rules about what you can release and who you can unmask,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters. “That’s different than having the Obama administration surveil the Trump campaign.”

In a separate development Wednesday, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee joined with the top Democrat on the panel to ask the Trump administration to turn over all documents detailing Flynn’s contacts with, and payments from foreign sources, including people connected to the Kremlin.

Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, asked for all relevant documents by April 3.

New Scrutiny

Flynn is facing new scrutiny for previously undisclosed work benefiting the interests of the Turkish government.

Chaffetz and Cummings are seeking documents related to Flynn’s security clearance applications and contacts and payments from Russian, Turkish and any other foreign sources including the Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, dating from Flynn’s 2014 retirement from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the present. They also want documents connected to Flynn’s vetting for the national security post, his work with a speaker’s bureau and any documentation that Flynn sought U.S. approvals for payments from foreign sources.

Democrats on the House committee last week released documents showing Flynn received more than $45,000 from RT for taking part in a December 2015 gala where he sat at President Vladimir Putin’s table.

Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, said the retired lieutenant general “both informed and fully briefed” the Defense Intelligence Agency about his Russia trip beforehand and when he returned.

Other documents showed that Flynn received $11,250 for a 2015 speaking engagement in Washington for Kaspersky Government Security Solutions, Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of a Russian cybersecurity firm; and an $11,250 payment from Volga-Dnepr Airlines.