Just when you thought the tale of Russian influence on U.S. politics couldn’t get any more twisted: along comes from evidence that the White House orchestrated a ‘leak’ … to itself.
Evidence is growing that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes engaged in an elaborate charade last week when he went to brief the president about what he spun as an alarming development: the U.S. government had spied on some of his top aides.
Nunes claimed that he was visiting the White House to tell the president about ‘incidental collection’ of Trump transition team officials caught up in foreign surveillance. He claimed this information had been brought to him by whistleblowers.
But then Nunes’ story began to fall apart. First came the news that he mysteriously fell off the grid the evening before he briefed the president. That was followed by his admission that he had been on White House grounds that night.
And on Thursday, things went from bad to worse for Nunes and the White House. The New York Times reported that two White House officials were the ones who gave Nunes those intelligence reports.
This means that these White House officials provided documents to Nunes privately, after which Nunes rushed publicly to the White House to brief them on documents he had reviewed. Whether it was the purpose of the charade or not, the mysterious behavior of the chairman has blown up the intelligence community’s investigation into Russia and changed the topic from the FBI’s ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Thursday’s report means that either Nunes has been lying to the public, or The New York Times is flat wrong on a story that neither Nunes nor the White House will deny.
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- Discussion
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My latest with @lachlan: Evidence grows that Nunes engaged in an elaborate ruse when he went to brief the president https://t.co/VjuL0l3b5g
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) March 30, 2017
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