Trump says he expects a health care deal soon

Nunes has been spending time at the White House, and his fellow committee members, Republicans and Democrats, are wondering how their investigation is going to be independent if their chairman is reporting to the White House.

Schiff said Nunes’ connections to the White House have raised insurmountable public doubts about whether the committee can credibly investigate the president’s campaign associates.

Schiff says if the documents are indeed the same, they raise “profound” questions about why the White House did not provide them to the president in the first place and whether the Trump administration is trying to “launder” information through the House committee. On Mar. 22, Nunes angered Democratic members of the committee by publicly airing that members of the Trump transition team had been incidentally surveilled.

Schiff and other Democrats have called for Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation and work on the committee was effectively halted this week.

“The evidence is now clear that the White House and Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have worked together to halt what was previously billed as a sweeping investigation of Russian interference in last year’s election”, Lizza wrote. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) must be removed from the chairmanship of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

When Spicer said that he didn’t have authority over how the committee conducted its investigation, Garrett replied, “You do have authority about whether he gets into this building and can review security information on this site”.

Nunes, who has otherwise been tight-lipped about his source, told Bloomberg’s Eli Lake on Monday that his source was an intelligence official, not a White House staffer.

Nunes said at the time that it appeared the intelligence was collected legally, but expressed concern about the “unmasking” of some of the transition personnel who became swept up in government efforts to collect information related to foreign matters. “We want greatness for this country that we love”, he said.

This morning, The Washington Post broke the news that the Trump administration tried to block former Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying before Congress in what was supposed to be an open session on the Trump team’s ties to Russian officials. “We’re not even having our regularly scheduled meetings”.

Asked at today’s press briefing if an NSA official should be combing through classified information to search for material that might validate what Trump tweeted, Spicer shot back, “Your question assumes the reporting is correct”.

“On one hand, you want certain answers, and on the other hand, you want to talk about [the White House] being involved”, he added. “You can’t keep your credibility”, Jones said.

Afterwards, Nunes emerges onto the White House lawn to speak to a gaggle of reporters waiting there. He described the source as an intelligence official, not a White House official.

On Wednesday, he accused some of his committee members of not being “serious” about the ongoing probe. Yet when asked whether he would continue to lead the committee’s investigation, Nunes asked, “Well, why would I not?”