WASHINGTON _ The head of the House Intelligence Committee said he met with a person on White House grounds to view secret intelligence documents that he used to bolster President Donald Trump's surveillance claims, as calls grew on Capitol Hill for an expanded probe into Russian meddling in the presidential race.
Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, declined to identify his source, but said it was an intelligence official, not a White House staffer.
Nunes told Bloomberg View's Eli Lake that the meeting occurred on the White House grounds because it was the most convenient secure location with a computer connected to the system that included the reports, which are only distributed within the executive branch.
"We don't have networked access to these kinds of reports in Congress," Nunes said.
The chairman said he has been hearing for several weeks about the existence of intelligence reports that contained details on Trump's transition team.
"The reports included details about the Trump transition, meetings of Trump and senior advisers; they were distributed throughout the intelligence community and to the White House," Nunes said in the interview. "In some cases, there was additional unmasking of Trump transition team officials."
Several congressional committees, as well as the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, are investigating Russian meddling in the U.S. election, including the hacking and release of Democratic emails. For the House Intelligence Committee, that probe has expanded into the explosive question of whether anyone close to Trump abetted the effort. Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, and veteran Republican operative Roger Stone offered Friday to testify before Nunes's committee.
But questions about how Nunes received intelligence intercepts _ that he described as routine, legal surveillance that picked up conversations with Trump aides during the transition _ have raised new doubts about his panel's ability to conduct a nonpartisan inquiry.
A Democrat on the panel said Monday that the disclosure that Nunes viewed the new documents on White House grounds _ with no other panel members present _ means that the existing inquiries aren't sufficient.
"The @realDonaldTrump @WhiteHouse is obstructing Congress's #RussianHacking investigation. Ind. Commission is only path to find the truth," said Rep. Eric Stalwell, a Democrat from California who sits on the Intelligence Committee.
Nunes has declined to identify the source for this information, and hasn't shared the information yet with his Democratic colleagues on the panel.
The top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff of California, also blasted Nunes for briefing Trump directly on the information, one day after first viewing it.
"My complaint with the chairman is taking whatever information he has to the White House, when the White House is the subject in a way of the investigation," he said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Last week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer denied that the administration was involved in providing the intelligence to Nunes.
"I don't know why he would brief the speaker and then come down here to brief us on something that we would have briefed him on," he told reporters. "It doesn't really seem to make a ton of sense. So I'm not aware of it, but it doesn't really pass the smell test."
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