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US under Trump Series: Hose Intelligence chair Nunes confirms surveillance on Trump team

The House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes confirmed yesterday that there has been incidental surveillance of the Trump team during the transition period. Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, he did not disclose the new information which he received but could share the followings,

  • There was incidental surveillance of Trump team during the transition period. The information he has received so far suggest that the surveillance took place from November to January.
  • There were some inappropriate unmasking of names. US law required the intelligence agencies to mask the names of involved US persons as probably person 1 or like that. There were unmaskings of people beyond General Michael Flynn, who resigned after it became clear that he misinformed the Vice President.
  • The intelligence reports including the unmasking names of the members of the Trump team and the President-elect were widely distributed across agencies. One must note that before going out of the White House, at the 11th hour, the former President Barrack Obama signed an executive order that allows the top intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) to distribute their intelligence reports across 16 other agencies before applying the privacy protection.
  • The reports which are dozens and likely to be more have nothing to do with Russia or do not possess any foreign intelligence value.
  • As of now, it can’t be determined who ordered these surveillances and especially the unmaskings of names. Involvement of senior Obama officials can’t be ruled out at the moment.
  • Mr. Nunes once again mentioned that there were no physical wiretapping of President Trump that was ordered by Barrack Obama and there are no signs that Trump campaign colluded with Russia in 2016 election.

The information received so far looks very disturbing and it might turn out as one of the biggest scandals in the US politics where a President-elect was under surveillance of any sort. Once again a victory for Trump and all those who have been criticizing him over his ‘wiretapping’ tweet are in for another embarrassment.

Mr. Nunes informed the majority leader Paul Ryan of the new information as well as the White House.

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