| House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes announced Wednesday at a press conference that President Donald Trump's personal communications and those of associates may have been picked up by intelligence agencies conducting surveillance of foreign targets after the election -- and he hurried to the White House to brief the President.
He said the conversations were "incidentally" collected as part of intelligence sweeps focusing on other people, and implied Trump was not the target of the surveillance operation. "This is a normal, incidental collection, based on what I could collect," Nunes said. Read the full story.
But Democrats were in the dark: In another news conference later in the day, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, expressed deep concern that Nunes did not tell committee members about the revelations before he briefed the press or went to the White House. "The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate for the White House, because he can't do both," Schiff said.
'Somewhat' vindicated: The revelations do not appear to support Trump's claims, debunked by FBI Director James Comey, that he was wiretapped by his predecessor President Barack Obama. Rather, they appear to relate to conversations between Trump or associates and people who were targeted by FISA warrants. Despite that, Trump told reporters in a brief exchange he felt "somewhat" vindicated about his claims.
So what's next? Nunes is saying he'll have more information about the surveillance possibly on Friday. And Schiff is calling for an independent commission to investigate the Trump campaign team's ties with Russia. | 
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