Devin Nunes burned columnist Eli Lake on his Trump surveillance sources. Lake just fired back

Devin Nunes.
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

When The New York Times reported Thursday that two White House officials had shown House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) the classified reports he cited when publicly alleging that President Trump's transition team communications had been incidentally collected during foreign surveillance, Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake took special note. Earlier in the week, Lake said, Nunes had "told me that his source for that information was an intelligence official, not a White House staffer. It turns out, he misled me."

Nunes was reportedly fed the classified intelligence by two Trump political appointees: National Security Council senior intelligence director Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom Trump stopped National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster from firing, and White House national security lawyer Michael Ellis, who used to work for Nunes in the House. This revelation "is a body blow for Nunes, who presented his findings last week as if they were surprising to the White House," Lake writes. "It strains credulity to think that Trump would need Nunes to tell him about intelligence reports discovered by people who work in the White House."

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.