House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said that he used the White House to confirm what he already knew about the alleged surveillance of President Trump aides during the transition.
“I did use the White House to help to confirm what I already knew from other sources,” the lawmaker told Bloomberg on Thursday.
Nunes offered similar remarks earlier this week, stating that he was on White House grounds, but not in the White House itself, in order to “confirm what I already knew” the day before he took information that Trump aides had been swept up in U.S. surveillance to the president.
At that point he noted that no one in the White House was aware that he was there.
{mosads}Nunes has said he won’t reveal the source of his information. The New York Times on Thursday reported that Nunes used two White House officials to help him gather information that he believes demonstrates that President Trump’s transition team was incidentally surveilled when former President Obama intelligence officials were gathering information on Russia.
According to the newspaper, the two officials were Ezra Cohen-Watnick of the National Security Council and a national security lawyer with the White House counsel’s office, Michael Ellis.
Nunes has faced backlash for how he received and handled the information.
A day after the meeting, Nunes called for a press conference to reveal that he acquired new information that demonstrated that Trump’s team was incidentally surveilled by the U.S. intelligence community.
His meeting on White House grounds was later revealed. He maintained that he met with a source there in order to discuss the matter inside a secure facility.
Following Nunes’s press conference, the lawmaker chose not to immediately brief the other members of the House Intelligence Committee and briefed Trump instead.