| Oh, so the press can find that kind of stuff out huh? |
A pair of White House officials played a role in providing Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.
The revelation that White House officials assisted in the disclosure of the intelligence reports — which Mr. Nunes then discussed with President Trump — is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the last presidential election.
Mr. Nunes has also been faulted by his congressional colleagues for sharing the information with President Trump before consulting with other members of the intelligence committee.
Nunes has repeatedly refused to identify his sources, but that did not stop the NYT.
Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment.
So to be clear the information that Devin Nunes rushed to the White House to deliver to Donald Trump was given to him by two people who were already in the White House.
I am not a security expert but I have to ask, why in the hell didn't these people simply tell Donald Trump this information themselves, and leave Nunes out of it?
Why all the cloak and dagger?
Is it because the information is bullshit and the White House did not want their name attached to it?
By the way apparently after he was fired by Trump's national security adviser Ezra Cohen-Watnick went running to The Donald who overruled that decision.
Well now isn't THAT interesting?
And as WaPo points out things just got a whole lot worse for Nunes:
This conflicts with what Nunes has apparently said about his source or sources. He has declined to name them, but he and a spokesman have reportedly said and/or strongly suggested it wasn't White House staff.
Nunes reportedly told Bloomberg's Eli Lake in an interview Monday “that his source was not a White House staffer and was an intelligence official," Lake wrote.
A Nunes spokesman, Jack Langer, also told the Los Angeles Times that it wasn’t a White House staffer, the Times reported.
And Nunes again appeared to deny meeting with any White House aides in a Monday afternoon interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer:
BLITZER: In addition going to that secure room to look over these documents, do you have other meetings at the White House? Did you meet with the president or any of his aides while you were there that night?
NUNES: No. And in fact, I'm quite sure that people in the West Wing had no idea I was there.
Well look at that, yet another Trump supporter gets caught in a lie.
So I have two questions:
Why is this guy still the House Intelligence Committee Chairman again?
And aren't we glad we have a Senate Intelligence Committee?
