Democrats in House seek Nunes' recusal

WASHINGTON -- Top House Democrats on Monday called for the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to recuse himself from the panel's investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, saying there's mounting evidence that he's too close to President Donald Trump.

The calls by Reps. Adam Schiff of California, the committee's top Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, came after revelations that the committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, had met on the White House grounds with a source who showed him secret U.S. intelligence reports.

The next day, Nunes revealed that Trump or his closest associates may have been "incidentally" swept up in foreign surveillance by U.S. spy agencies.

Monday's developments coincided with the disclosure that Trump's son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, had privately met in December with the chief executive of a Russian bank being targeted by U.S. sanctions, and that Kushner has agreed to discuss such contacts with the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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Trump administration officials sought to play down the significance of both developments, describing Kushner's contacts as inconsequential and refusing to answer questions about the Nunes visit. "I'm not going to get into who he met with or why he met with them," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.

Trump himself suggested late Monday that the House panel should investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton's dealings with Russia. "Trump Russia story is a hoax," he tweeted.

Schiff suggested that Nunes, who served on the Trump transition team, was too close to the White House to run an independent and thorough inquiry.

"The public cannot have the necessary confidence that matters involving the president's campaign or transition team can be objectively investigated or overseen by the chairman," Schiff said Monday evening.

Still, Schiff stopped short of pulling the panel's Democrats out of the investigation. Doing so could jeopardize Democrats' influence over the inquiry and their access to intelligence on possible ties between Trump associates and Moscow, and whether Russians intervened in last year's election.

The revelation that Nunes had viewed intelligence materials on White House grounds the day before making an announcement that bolstered the administration's case fueled speculation that Nunes was acting at the instruction of the president. The bipartisan investigation has hinged on the ability of Nunes to conduct a neutral inquiry, as well as the mutual trust and cooperation of Nunes and Schiff.

Pelosi echoed Schiff's call for Nunes to recuse himself, saying his behavior had "tarnished" his post, and that House Speaker Paul Ryan should weigh in.

"Speaker Ryan must insist that Chairman Nunes at least recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation immediately," she said in a statement. "That leadership is long overdue."

The spokesman for Nunes, Jack Langer, said the congressman met with his source at the White House because he needed access to a secure facility where people with security clearances can legally view classified information. But such facilities can also be found in the Capitol building and other locations across Washington.

Democrats characterized Nunes' announcement last week as an attempt by a congressman who was eager to do the White House's bidding to distract from the investigation into Russian meddling.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called it "more than suspicious" that Nunes went to the White House complex, pointing out that he would "have to be escorted" while there.

"Who is he meeting with?" Warner said in an interview with NBC. "Was it a source or somebody from the administration?"

Langer did not address those concerns Monday. In a brief statement, he said, "Chairman Nunes met with his source at the White House grounds in order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source."

He added: "The chairman is extremely concerned by the possible improper unmasking of names of U.S. citizens, and he began looking into this issue even before President Trump tweeted his assertion that Trump Tower had been wiretapped."

Spicer said Monday that White House officials had no previous knowledge of Nunes' visit to the White House grounds, saying the only information he had came from "public reports."

He also said officials were "not concerned" about the prospect that someone within the executive branch had leaked classified information to Nunes.

"Someone who is cleared to share classified information with someone else and is cleared is not a leak," Spicer said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., accused Nunes of weakening not only the committee's tradition of bipartisanship but also Congress itself. He urged Ryan to replace Nunes.

"He has not been cooperating like someone who is interested in getting to the unvarnished truth," Schumer said.

Nunes said in an interview Monday that no one in the Republican leadership had asked him to step aside, and he defended his actions as part of an attempt to investigate potential misconduct by U.S. spy agencies against Trump associates.

"Everybody is worried by process, and they should be worried about what I've actually said about what I've seen," Nunes said, when asked whether it was proper for him to visit the White House under those circumstances. "Why all the worry about where I saw information? We go to the White House all the time; our job is providing oversight of the executive branch."

Acknowledging that the incidental collection from surveillance appeared to be legal, Nunes on Wednesday said his concerns surrounded additional names that may have been improperly "unmasked."

Schiff also worried that anyone viewing the distributed reports could decipher who they were discussing even though the names were masked.

Nunes repeatedly declined to offer any details about the source of what he characterized as "dozens" of classified intelligence reports, which Schiff accused him of viewing in a "dead-of-night excursion." Nunes only said the information had gotten to him after the committee's public hearing Monday.

On Friday, Nunes declined to say whether that information was from the White House.

Nunes on Friday defended his decision to bypass Schiff and go to the White House, saying he felt a "duty" to tell Trump because of Democrats' "relentless" political attacks.

"If we would have crossed paths in the hall, maybe I would have said something to him," Nunes said in an interview. "But what I was trying to do was get to the president as quick as possible."

"It's about the politics of this," he added. "And I just thought that it was more important for me to get to the president of the United States because Mr. Schiff was going to find out."

Trump seized on the information, saying he felt "somewhat" vindicated in his wiretapping claim against former President Barack Obama -- debunked by FBI Director James Comey and Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, as well as the heads of both the Senate and House investigations, including Nunes.

At a time when the White House was struggling to defend Trump's accusation that he had been wiretapped under orders issued by Obama, the Nunes assertion helped shift public attention and, to some, cast Trump as a victim of espionage abuse.

In reality, Nunes appeared to be referring to legitimate intelligence operations against foreign individuals who were either in contact with Trump associates or mentioned them in conversations that were monitored as part of routine U.S. surveillance. Nunes reiterated Monday that he has seen no evidence of illegality.

Current and former national security officials described Nunes' trip to the White House complex, apparently late in the evening after he had slipped away from his staff, as highly unusual. Doing so would ordinarily require Nunes and the person he met with to have been cleared in advance and accompanied by an escort -- requirements that seemed to undercut White House claims to have no information about the encounter.

"How incredibly irregular," said Matt Olsen, who served in the Obama administration as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center and the general counsel at the National Security Agency. "The only explanation you're left with is that this is all being orchestrated by the White House."

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Rosenberg and Emmarie Huetteman of The New York Times; by Karoun Demirjian, Greg Miller, Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Devlin Barrett of The Washington Post; and by Eileen Sullivan, Vivian Salama and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press.

A Section on 03/28/2017

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