that two White House officials had provided House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes <\/a>with reports showing that Trump and his associates were “incidentally surveilled” by U.S. spy agencies.<\/p>\nThe top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff who previously called for Nunes to recuse himself of the Russian investigation, said he\u2019s “more than willing” to review the material but questioned the administration\u2019s motives, saying officials may be trying to disseminate information that helps Trump\u2019s case<\/strong>. \u201cI hope they\u2019ll have some kind of explanation for why they chose this path,\u201d Schiff told reporters at the Capitol.<\/p>\nSchiff has also accused Nunes of doing the president\u2019s bidding. On Thursday, Schiff also said that the broader investigation must continue. \u201cThis is not going to distract us from doing our Russia investigation,\u201d Schiff said, adding that the White House action \u201craises profound questions.\u201d Schiff also said he didn\u2019t know whether the material being offered is the same as the documents that were viewed by Nunes.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at an open Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday on Russian interference in the elections, several experts testified that Russia\u2019s efforts began as early as 2008 and peaked during last year\u2019s election. In a depature from the conventional narrative that only Democrats were hacked, Clint Watts, former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said other targets were prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the intelligence panel.<\/p>\n
\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Rubio of Florida said Thursday that staff members on his presidential campaign were unsuccessfully targeted in July 2016 by hackers using an address in Russia and that former campaign aides were again targeted on Wednesday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Ah yes, the old government-sponsored Russian hackers using “an address in Russia” to make sure they are not discovered by a cybersleuthing US senator.<\/p>\n
In any case, while Nunes had refused to disclose who showed him the classified material, the New York Times reported on Thursday that Nunes was shown the material by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, who works at the White House Counsel\u2019s Office and previously worked on the House Intelligence Committee staff. As reported earlier, Cohen-Watnick was an aide brought into the White House by Michael Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser in February after Trump concluded Flynn had given misleading information about contacts with Russian officials.<\/p>\n
Nunes has said, and the Times said it confirmed, that the material isn\u2019t related to the investigation into Russian attempts to influence the election<\/strong>, nor did it necessarily show any illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.<\/p>\nWhile the House investigation has been stymied by the dispute over the material shown to Nunes, the Senate Intelligence Committee is proceeding with its own investigation. Panel Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, vowed that the probe won\u2019t be politicized.\u00a0 \u201cThe public deserves to hear the truth about possible Russian involvement in our elections,\u201d Burr said.<\/p>\n
In light of the events in just the past several hours, we find that rather improbable.<\/p>\n
___
\nhttp:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2017-03-30\/white-house-makes-surveillance-documents-available-lawmakers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}