Last week, Nunes went to the White House grounds and reviewed intelligence documents with a source. Though
he and
his spokesman repeatedly vowed to never reveal
any information about his source, he apparently
told Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) that
the information came from a “whistleblower-type person” and told
Bloomberg’s Eli Lake that
the source was an intelligence official but not a White House staffer. Nunes
also claimed that no one at
the White House knew he was there — a claim that would require shocking ineptitude on the part of
the Secret Service team that clears all visits to the grounds before guests can enter.
Spicer also
mocked the notion that the White House had provided the information — which Nunes then presented to President Trump before even alerting his committee.
“I don’t know what he actually briefed the president on, but I don’t know why he would come up to brief the president on something that we gave him,” Spicer told the press corp last week. “That doesn’t really seem to make a ton of sense.”
According to the New York Times report, multiple U.S. officials identified Nunes’ connections 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.”
Trump
claimed after Nunes announced his findings that he felt “somewhat vindicated,” even though nothing in the Intelligence Chairman’s discovery in any way
confirmed the president’s definitively debunked claim that President Obama had “tapped” Trump Tower .
