Via Huffington Post:
On Wednesday, March 22,….. Nunes said he was alarmed after seeing intelligence reports disseminated within the Obama administration after November 8 that apparently were records of relatively routine surveillance of foreign nationals that “incidentally” included references to known Trump associates.
Nunes said at the time:
What I’ve read seems to me to be some level of surveillance activity — perhaps legal, but I don’t know that it’s right, I don’t know that the American people would be comfortable with what I’ve read.”
We know that after “viewing” these ‘materials Nunes went to Ryan, then to Trump, and then held a press conference. Nunes has not shared and says he will not share the source with the FBI, the Intel Committee, or anyone other than (possibly) Ryan and Trump. He has not given a reason for keeping this material secret.
What was this material? Nunes seems ashamed of the whole episode….his conduct, his source, and his somewhat conflicting stories.
HuffPost:
the fact is that all the essential elements of Nunes’s story had already appeared in the National Enquirer edition of March 27 – available on the grocery store newsstand as early as March 20 – two whole days before Nunes held his initial press conferences. Here are direct quotes (copy not available online as of this writing) of the key excerpts from the Enquirer story that are strikingly similar to the claims Nunes made just two days later:
The Enquirer, quoting infamous fraudulator Larry C. Johnson, and an ex-CIA employee from 1985-89, whom the Enquirer cited as one of its sources:
“Efforts to obtain a FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant were initiated by political operatives in the Justice Department, and not by the FBI, all the way up to the attorney general or deputy attorney...They were not initiated because of possible criminal activity, but requested by officials acting on political motivations.
Nunes made similar references to apparently legal FISA court surveillance requests.
The Enquirer story cites another source, NSA employee William Binney, who supposedly told
…the ENQUIRER how the Obama administration turned the NSA’s Stellar Wind program against Trump for political sabotage!...He told us Trump’s phones ARE tapped and that ‘transcripts exist of the intercepted calls!’
Further, the Enquirer said,
our spy sources inside America’s intelligence community allowed The ENQUIRER (emphasis theirs) to view 132 pages of those transcripts – outlining the contents of calls made from numbers inside Trump Tower in NYC to other unspecified numbers. What’s more, and as The ENQUIRER can now relate, those calls were mundane and innocuous.
It should again be noted that the Enquirer’s publisher, David Pecker, is a long-time friend of President Trump.
Of course Nunes will never reveal his source; it’s hidden in plain view, at the checkout stand of your local grocery store.