Emmarie Huetteman

Rep Devin Nunes (R-CA), the chairman of a House panel investigating Russian interference in the presidential election, may have dealt his own inquiry a fatal blow.

Armed with intelligence that some Republicans said bolstered President Trump’s widely disputed claim of being wiretapped by the Obama administration, Chairman Nunes bypassed Democrats and went directly to the White House. The new information, Chairman Nunes said, showed that American intelligence agencies monitoring foreign officials may have “incidentally” picked up communications of Trump transition team members. The move angered Democrats who said that Nunes’s attempt to buttress Trump’s accusation raised questions about his ability to conduct an impartial bipartisan investigation. The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Rep Adam Schiff (D-CA), issued a challenge, saying that Chairman Nunes had to decide whether he was chairman of an independent investigation or “is going to act as a surrogate of the White House, because he cannot do both.”