Today in Trump-Russia news: The intel is coming from inside the house — the White House
Here's the latest in the Trump-Russia fiasco, where it looks like Nunes may have rushed to the White House to brief them on info he got from the White House, and Comey may have wanted to go public with the Trump investigation half a year ago.
Report: Nunes got info from the White House
Remember that super important, possibly damning, and oddly vague piece of intelligence that House Intelligence Chair Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said he simply had to brief the White House about? Now it looks like that intelligence may have actually come straight from the White House.
A new report from the New York Times alleges that two White House officials helped Nunes receive that intelligence were Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a national security lawyer at the White House Counsel's Office. Cohen-Watnick recently kept his job on the NSC against the wishes of national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, after Trump advisors Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner intervened on Cohen-Watnick's behalf. Ellis is a former staffer for the House Intelligence Committee.
Nunes refused to confirm or deny the veracity of the report and White House press secretary Sean Spicer said he wouldn't comment on the story.
However, at a previous press briefing, Spicer implied that he knew that Nunes' information came from two individuals.
To recap, it would seem that Nunes went to the White House, reportedly obtained information from from the White House, then left and later returned to the White House to brief the president about the very important serious information they had just told him about earlier.
White House beckons heads of intelligence committees to review documents
The White House also announced Wednesday that it was beckoning the top members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees from both parties to come review important documents that they discovered "in the ordinary course of business."
The White House says that the documents respond to the committees' letter requesting information on whether or not information collected on U.S. persons was mishandled by the intelligence community.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee expressed "profound concern" over the way the White House presented them with the documents and argued they should be made available to the whole committee.
Comey wanted to expose the Trump investigation in the Summer
Remember how FBI director James Comey made the unprecedented announcement that Hillary Clinton was under FBI investigation days before Election Day, possibly costing her the presidency? Turns how he wanted to do the same thing for Donald Trump. A report from Newsweek says Comey had floated the idea of disclosing the investigation into Donald Trump's Russia ties in an op-ed during the summer but was shot down by the Obama administration.
Thanks, Obama.
What's more...
• Putin says he didn't hack the election with a terrible analogy
• House Speaker Paul Ryan thinks that Nunes' source is a "whistleblower type person."
• You may be able to follow James Comey's super secret Twitter account.
• Cyber experts say Russia targets Trump with fake news because he'll repeat it.