March 30, 2017

Last week, Devin Nunes went on Wolf Blitzer's show to spin his ridiculous actions with regard to his announcement that surveillance of the Trump transition team did take place. In that interview, as seen above, he outright denied that any White House officials gave him the information.

He lied.

The New York Times reports that they have identified the sources that HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes relied upon for "intelligence" which caused him to rush to the press last week (twice) after "briefing" the White House.

One of them is a National Security Council official who was a holdover from Michael Flynn's short tenure, and the other is a former Nunes staffer who went to work in the White House.

Mr. Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The officials said that earlier this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.

You know who else is on the National Security Council? Steve Bannon. You think maybe he brokered the meetings between Nunes and these officials? Hmmm. And of course one of them is a Flynn holdover. Of course.

But what did the reports contain?

Officials said the reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration.

You might recall that Nunes claimed he was able to figure out who the incidental collection was on because Nunes served on the transition team specifically in the national security and intelligence areas. So he pieced together masked identities and then ran to the White House to appear to tell Trump so Trump could claim he was vindicated.

We knew this on the day he did it. He was running cover for the White House, proving he actually does work for Trump and not the American people.

What now? Ryan must DEMAND Nunes resign as chair of the Intelligence Committee. Nunes should also resign his seat, because he was not acting in the interests of those who elected him, but in the interests of Donald Trump, and Donald Trump alone.

Update: As digby notes here, Cohen-Watnick, Flynn's holdover, is someone General McMaster wanted to fire because he considered him a "threat."

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