WASHINGTON — (CNN) House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s personal communications may have been picked up by investigators through “incidental collection.”
Nunes said at a news conference he discovered the potential surveillance of Trump himself while reviewing intelligence reports, but said it was not related to Russia.
“This is a normal, incidental collection, based on what I could collect,” Nunes said. “This appears to be all legally collected foreign intelligence under” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Nunes said he alerted House Speaker Paul Ryan about the collection and is traveling to the White House Wednesday afternoon.
“I’m actually alarmed by it,” Nunes said.
Nunes is chairing the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling into the US election last year. Two weeks ago, Trump asked Congress to investigate whether Trump Tower was wiretapped by his predecessor, then-President Barack Obama.
Nunes did not know whether the “incidental collection” happened at Trump Tower, and could not say for certain whether Trump’s communications were directly collected.
Nunes said the collection included Trump transition officials, and also said that it happened after the election. He said he could not say whether it meant that Trump was “spied on”
“I’m not going to get into legal definitions, bit clearly I have a concern,” he said.
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