Rep. Adam Schiff views documents White House says back Trump surveillance claim

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) traveled to the White House Friday to view documents President Trump has said partially vindicate his claim that his predecessor ordered surveillance of him during the campaign.

In a statement, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said he was told they were “precisely the same materials” viewed previously by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Adam Nunes (R-Tulare), which Schiff said should now be shared with the full panel membership.

“Nothing I could see today warranted a departure from the normal review procedures,” Schiff said, adding that he could not discuss the contents of the documents, which remain classified.

Nunes was shown the documents last week by White House officials surreptitiously, then announced to reporters the next day that he needed urgently to go to the White House to brief Trump about them.

Schiff, in his statement, said that “the White House has yet to explain why senior White House staff apparently shared these materials with but one member of either [Intelligence] committee, only for their contents to be briefed back to the White House.”

Schiff also had a brief but “cordial” meeting with Trump during his time at the White House, a spokesman said.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters earlier Friday that other Democrats have been invited to the White House to view the materials, which he said would “shed light” on their investigation.

Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are conducting separate reviews of Russian interference into the 2016 election; Trump has asked each panel to also probe his own claim that his predecessor engaged in wire tapping of his phones at Trump Tower during the campaign, an assertion that has been denied by Nunes as well as the heads of the FBI and intelligence agencies.