Private communications of Donald Trump and his presidential transition team may have been scooped up by American intelligence officials monitoring other targets and improperly distributed throughout spy agencies, the chairman of the House intelligence committee said Wednesday, an extraordinary public airing of often-secret information that brought swift protests from Democrats.
Republican Rep. Devin Nunes’ comments led the committee’s ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, to renew his party’s calls for an independent probe of Trump campaign links to Russia in addition to the GOP-led panel’s investigation.
In back-to-back news conferences at the Capitol and then the White House — where he had privately briefed the president — Nunes said he was concerned by officials’ handling of the communications in the waning days of the Obama administration.
He said the surveillance was conducted legally and did not appear to be related to the current FBI investigation into Trump associates’ contacts with Russia or with any criminal warrants. And the revelations, he said, did nothing to change his assessment that Trump’s explosive allegations about wiretaps at Trump Tower were false.
Still, the White House immediately seized on his statements in what appeared to be a coordinated public display.
Moments after Nunes spoke on Capitol Hill, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer read his statements from the White House briefing room podium. The California congressman quickly headed up Pennsylvania Avenue to personally brief the president and to address reporters outside the West Wing. Nunes’ decision to brief the president was particularly unusual, given Trump almost certainly has access to the information from his intelligence agencies.
Nunes briefed reporters on the new information without consulting with Schiff and that did not sit well with the top Democrat on the committee.
Schiff declared he now has “profound doubt” about the integrity and independence of the committee’s probe. He said that “a credible investigation cannot be conducted this way.”
Putin connection
Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics.
The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort that he never worked for Russian interests.
Manafort proposed in confidential strategy plans as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.
Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP.
“We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success,” Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, “will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government.”
In a statement to the AP, Manafort confirmed that he worked for Deripaska in various countries but said the work was being unfairly cast as “inappropriate or nefarious” as part of a “smear campaign.”
Health care debate
Also Wednesday, with the top Republican legislative priority in peril, Trump dangled possible changes to the health care bill aimed at placating conservatives threatening to torpedo the legislation. The White House seemed to make progress after GOP opposition had snowballed a day before a showdown House roll call.
Trump huddled at the White House with 18 lawmakers, a mix of supporters and opponents, Vice President Mike Pence saw around two dozen and House GOP leaders held countless talks with lawmakers at the Capitol. The sessions came as leaders rummaged for votes on a roll call they can ill afford to lose without diminishing their clout for the rest of the GOP agenda.
Most GOP opponents were conservatives asserting that the legislation demolishing former President Barack Obama’s health care law did not go far enough. They were demanding repeal of the law’s requirements that insurers pay for specified services such as maternity care and mental health counseling.
Gorsuch testimony
Assured of support from majority Republicans, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, wrapped up two days of Senate questioning Wednesday to glowing GOP reviews but complaints from frustrated Democrats that he concealed his views from the American public.
Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge in Denver, refused repeated attempts to get him to talk about key legal and political issues of the day. But he did tell Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who worried that Gorsuch would vote to restrict abortion, that “no one is looking to return us to horse and buggy days.”
The Supreme Court itself threw one surprise Gorsuch’s way when it ruled unanimously Wednesday in a case involving learning-disabled students, overturning a standard for special education that Gorsuch had endorsed in an earlier case on the same topic.
The decision prompted sharp questioning from committee Democrats in the second of two days of testimony that spanned 20 hours.
“Why in your early decision did you want to lower the bar so low?” Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois asked.
Gorsuch said he was bound by an even earlier decision on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and said that any implication that he was against autistic children was “heartbreaking.”
“I was wrong senator, I was wrong because I was bound by circuit court precedent,” Gorsuch said. “And I’m sorry.”
Aside from a few uncomfortable moments, Gorsuch generally maintained the mix of earnest talk about respect for prior court decisions, a pledge for absolute independence — “when you put on the robe, you open your mind” — and folksy humor that led to lighthearted exchanges with Republicans about his passion for fly fishing.
“What’s the largest trout you ever caught?” Sen. Jeff Flake asked late in Tuesday’s session. “Oh, now we’re talking,” Gorsuch shot back.
