FOX News reporter James Rosen has just dropped a bombshell report: Evidence that amounts to a "smoking gun" points unmistakably toward President Obama's administration ordering surveillance on members of then-President Elect Trump's transition team:
Republican congressional investigators expect a potential “smoking gun” establishing that the Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team, and possibly the president-elect himself, will be produced to the House Intelligence Committee this week, a source told Fox News.
Classified intelligence showing incidental collection of Trump team communications, purportedly seen by committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and described by him in vague terms at a bombshell Wednesday afternoon news conference, came from multiple sources, Capitol Hill sources told Fox News. The intelligence corroborated information about surveillance of the Trump team that was known to Nunes, sources said, even before President Trump accused his predecessor of having wiretappedhim in a series of now-infamous tweets posted on March 4.
The intelligence is said to leave no doubt the Obama administration, in its closing days, was using the cover of legitimate surveillance on foreign targets to spy on President-elect Trump, according to sources.
The key to that conclusion is the unmasking of selected U.S. persons whose names appeared in the intelligence, the sources said, adding that the paper trail leaves no other plausible purpose for the unmasking other than to damage the incoming Trump administration.
While this may at first blush seem like merely wishful thinking among Republicans looking to pin a spying scandal on the Obama Administration, it does jibe with the information that Nunes first released on Wednesday: Intelligence gathered during an investigation that did not involve Russia and did not appear to serve any evidentiary purpose.
Nunes appeared to be dancing around a point that he seemed to want to make--that the Obama Administration was either unmasking or outright surveilling Trump transition team members for political purposes.
Given the fact that information gathered during the transition period was leaked to various media sources, it is starting to appear that there may have in fact been a concerted effort to use the intelligence apparatus to gather information that would be later used to embarrass the new Trump Administration.
However, jumping to any sort of conclusion would be premature since it is unclear just what this information might reveal. As they say, stay tuned.