Fox News reported Thursday that GOP congressional investigators are expecting to see evidence soon showing that the Obama administration surveilled President Trump’s transition team.
An unnamed source told the news channel that the “smoking gun” evidence will be produced to the House Intelligence Committee this week.
The committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on Wednesday announced to the press that he had seen intelligence reports showing that members of Trump’s transition team were “incidentally” swept up in legal intelligence collection of foreign targets.
Nunes briefed the White House on what he had seen, but the documents or their source have not been made available to the rest of the committee. Capitol Hill sources told Fox News that the reports Nunes saw came from several sources.
Despite Nunes saying that he believes the incidental collection was legal, sources told Fox that the intelligence will show that the Obama administration used legitimate surveillance as a cover to spy on Trump.
{mosads}In his Wednesday remarks to the press and in interviews since, Nunes has stressed his concerns about the so-called “unmasking,” or identification, of U.S. citizens picked up in the intel collection. He said the reports were circulated widely through the intelligence community.
Sources told Fox that the unmasking of U.S. individuals was aimed at harming the new administration.
Trump claimed in early March that President Obama had wiretapped him in Trump Tower during the campaign. He said this week he felt “somewhat vindicated” by Nunes’s announcement, although the chairman maintained there is no evidence that Obama had Trump’s “wires tapped.” Nunes said the intel he had seen was collected after the collection and was not related to Russia.
Fox reported that the NSA is expected to hand in documents to the House Intelligence Committee Friday.