Devin Nunes is a Republican Congressman from California. He is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Nunes rocked Washington on Wednesday when he announced he read a FISA warrant obtained by former President Barack Obama to spy on then-candidate Donald Trump.
For weeks now, the mainstream media told Americans the FISA warrant didn’t exist.
After meeting with President Trump, Nunes emerged from the White House and confirmed the existence of a FISA order used by the Obama administration to spy on the Trump transition team.
Nunes announced that the U.S. intelligence community “incidentally collected” and “widely disseminated” information on President Trump’s transition team.
“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 said.
Nunes said he was so “alarmed” by what he saw in the FISA warrant that he rushed over to the White House to brief the president.
“What I’ve read bothers me,” Nunes told reporters outside the White House. “And I think it should bother the president himself and his team because I think some of it seems to be inappropriate.”
Trump gleefully told reporters that he was “somewhat” vindicated by Nunes’ announcement.
“I appreciate him coming over,” Trump said.
CNN and other leftwing media outlets breathlessly reminded viewers that Nunes was on Trump’s transition team. That means Nunes himself was under surveillance by Obama.
Information gleaned from the wiretaps was used to oust General Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s national security adviser until Trump fired him for lying to VP Mike Pence about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador — conversations that were uncovered in the wiretaps.
Unfortunately for Obama, the surveillance and wiretapping found no evidence to support widespread allegations that Trump colluded with the Russians to influence the election.
The news on Wednesday shocked and angered Democratic lawmakers who were blindsided by Nunes’ announcement.
They called for Nunes to recuse himself as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee overseeing President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
But Nunes refused to back down. Instead, he promised to deliver even more explosive news on Friday about what he read in the FISA warrant.
A FISA warrant is an order issued by the secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to fast track FBI surveillance of foreign governments abroad and foreign officials living in the U.S.
FISA warrants are never supposed to be used by the U.S. government to spy on American citizens without a judge’s order.
According to Fox News and other media outlets, a judge’s order was issued to the Obama administration to spy on Trump — but only for a specific number of days leading up to November 8.
Evidence suggests that the Obama administration continued to spy on the Trump transition team as late as January 2017.
Trump supporters are calling for Obama’s arrest on espionage charges. But there’s no chance of that happening.
It helps that Obama fled to Tahiti for a month, and he is well outside of Washington’s jurisdiction.
FYI: for those of you who are skeptical about this post, please click here to read NBC News‘ fair and balanced report about this subject.
