Trump feels ‘somewhat’ vindicated by Nunes findings

President Trump said Wednesday he feels “somewhat” vindicated after the head of the House Intelligence Committee revealed that members of his transition team had their communications swept up in legal surveillance activities. 

“I somewhat do. I must tell you I somewhat do,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon at the White House.

“I very much appreciated the fact that they found what they found.”

{mosads}Trump spoke after Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) personally briefed the president on his findings. 

But the lawmaker reiterated that they do not back up Trump’s claim that former President Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped during the 2016 campaign.  

“That did not happen,” he said. 

FBI Director James Comey and Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, both testified this week to Nunes’s panel that they have seen no evidence to back up Trump’s claim. 

Nunes said earlier Wednesday that he found incidentally collected information on members of Trump’s transition team that were “widely disseminated” in intelligence reports. 

“What I’ve read bothers me, and I think it should bother the president himself and his team, because I think some of it seems to be inappropriate. But like I said, until we get all the information to the committee, it’s hard to really say,” said Nunes, who advised the Trump transition. 

The chairman came under scrutiny for deciding to brief Trump on the findings, given that his panel is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into his team’s ties to Russia. 

But Nunes denied there was any conflict, “because what I saw has nothing to do with Russia and nothing to do with the Russia investigation.”

“The president needs to know that these intelligence reports are out there, and I have a duty to tell him that.”