White House officials reportedly played a role in getting surveillance reports to Nunes

Devin Nunes stands in front of microphones, his hands outstretched.
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Two White House officials assisted in getting intelligence reports to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) last week that showed members of President Trump's team were incidentally caught up in foreign surveillance, The New York Times reports.

Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, discussed the reports with Trump before consulting with his fellow members of the committee. Later, Nunes said the night before he spoke with Trump, he received a phone call from a whistle-blower who met him on the White House grounds. U.S. officials have said the reports mostly were just about ambassadors and other foreign officials discussing their attempts to develop contacts in the Trump family and with his friends before the inauguration. Nunes has repeatedly said he will not reveal who gave him the information, and the Times is reporting it came from Ezra Cohen-Watnick, senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer working on national security issues at the White House Counsel's Office.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.