Rep. Schiff: It’s ‘Deeply Troubling’ How Nunes Is Speaking Directly to Press

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
SCHIFF: " In association with the committee, who would share that information with the white House. The committee has still not received the intercepts or other information that the chairman was referring to. And, therefore, it is really impossible for us to evaluate any of the merits of what the chairman has said. But I can say this. The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House. Because he cannot do both. And unfortunately, I think the actions of today throw great doubt into the ability of both the chairman and the committee to conduct the investigation the way it ought to be conducted. I have expressed these grave concerns with the chairman. I only learned about this the way that all of you did. When the chairman briefed the press in advance of briefing his own committee members. And that is a deep, deep problem. I think it does underscore the importance of establishing an independent commission, a body that is fully independent of any political considerations, including those that may emanate from the White House. That would certainly give me a lot of confidence that in addition to whatever work our committee does and the Senate intelligence committee does, that there is truly an independent body that is looking into the grave issues that had been raised. Second, with respect to the intercepts themselves that the chairman referenced, those have not been provided to the committee for evaluation. But on the basis of what the chairman has said, and on the basis of my conversation with the chairman, I can say this. There is still no evidence that the president was wiretapped by his predecessor. President Trump's claims that he was -- will remain as baseless today as they were yesterday. And they were the day before when the directors of the FBI and NSA testified that they were made without any basis in fact. If the incident today is an indication that after making the baseless claim, the president then aggravated the damage by implicating the British in a potential plot to have the British surveil him on behalf of President Obama, and now is attempting to interfere in the congressional investigation, again, with the effort of trying to provide some substance to a claim without substance, then the damage, the wrecking ball of this allegation has just claimed another victim, that being our own committee. What I understand from the chairman is that he has reviewed intercepts of foreign intelligence. And what I understand from the chairman is there's no indication that that surveillance was anything but lawful. And what people need to understand about foreign intelligence gathering and incidental collection is, if we are listening to two foreign spies, for example, talking to each other on foreign soil, or two representatives of a foreign government, and they mention a U.S. Person, that is incidental collection. It doesn't necessarily mean there's a call from a foreign party to a U.S. Person. Even the mention of a U.S. Person is incidental collection. And that name would be masked. If there is a call with a U.S. Person, or person identities are involved at all, those names are masked. But there are proper procedures for unmasking a name. When it is necessary for the intelligence agencies to understand the significance of the intercept, and they cannot do that when the names are masked, you can properly unmask the name. The chairman has provided no evidence that any names that were unmasked were unmasked inproperly. Of course, without the ability for the committee to look at the intercepts, we're not in a position to evaluate whether the procedures were followed or not followed. Moreover, as I understand from my conversation with the chairman, most of the names in the intercepts were in fact masked, and the chairman's concern was that he could still figure out the identities of some of the parties even though the names were masked. Well, that doesn't mean that the masking was improper. And so again, it's impossible to evaluate whether there's any there of the intercepts without the committee able to look at them, thus, the chair has not provided this evidence to the committee. So this is deeply troubling along many levels. But among the most significant levels is, it really impedes our ability to do this investigation the way we should. I've been part of investigations that were conducted properly. When the house intelligence committee investigated Benghazi, and I've been part of investigation that is were not, such as the Benghazi select committee. It was my hope that our investigation could be conducted properly. It's still my hope that this investigation should be conducted properly, but unfortunately the actions of the chair throw that very much in doubt. And I would be happy to respond to your questions."