"All of us are in the dark": Top Intelligence Committee Democrat blasts Devin Nunes for wild allegations

Nunes completely retracted claims made earlier this week about Trump being wiretapped

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published March 24, 2017 4:30PM (EDT)

 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., may have apologized to his fellow committee members on Thursday for leaking unproved wiretapping claims to President Donald Trump, but the ranking Democrat on that committee feels that Nunes is still not playing it straight with the American people.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California told reporters on Friday that "on Tuesday, Wednesday, the chairman — in what appears to be a dead of night excursion — obtains or reviews some documents that he has not shared with his own committee. And it's not just that he hasn't shared them with Democrats on the committee, he hasn't shared them with Republicans on the committee. All of us are essentially in the dark."

Schiff added, "But what was most concerning about that whole incident is taking that information to the White House. Now it is associates of the president who are potentially the subject of investigation into whether they colluded in any way with the Russians. So to take evidence that may or may not be related to the investigation to the White House was wholly inappropriate — and, of course, cast grave doubts into the ability to run a credible investigation and the integrity of that investigation."

Nunes himself admitted on Friday morning that, despite arguably making it seem like the information he shared with Trump somewhat vindicated the president's claim to have been wiretapped by President Barack Obama, in fact "there was no wiretapping of Trump Tower. That didn't happen."

Schiff also took to Twitter on Friday to declare that Chairman Nunes had cancelled open committee hearings with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan, and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Schiff claimed that this was "to choke off public info."


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Adam Schiff Devin Nunes Donald Trump Russia Vladimir Putin Wiretapping