House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) continued to push his unfounded accusations that members of President Barack Obama's administration maliciously "unmasked" the identities of Trump campaign and transition team officials who intelligence agencies caught having suspicious conversations with operatives loyal to the Russian government.
The Hill reported Thursday evening that Nunes sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats insisting that Obama officials made "hundreds" of requests to unmask the identities of Trump-loyal American citizens whose conversations with foreign officials were intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies.
“We have found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information,” said Nunes' letter.
Nunes briefly disrupted the investigation into Trump's ties to Russia last March when he claimed that he'd seen intelligence backing up the president's unfounded claim that Pres. Obama "wiretapped" Trump Tower in the months before the 2016 election.
In the end, it was found that Nunes was collaborating with White House officials in a partisan effort to derail the investigation and compromise the Intelligence Committee's findings.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) cast aspersions on his fellow Republican's attempt to interfere with the investigation last week, saying, "The unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes, and I’ll wait to go through our full evaluation to see if there was anything improper that happened."
