White House officials reportedly played a role in getting surveillance reports to Nunes

Two White House officials assisted in getting intelligence reports to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) last week that showed members of President Trump's team were incidentally caught up in foreign surveillance, The New York Times reports.

Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, discussed the reports with Trump before consulting with his fellow members of the committee. Later, Nunes said the night before he spoke with Trump, he received a phone call from a whistle-blower who met him on the White House grounds. U.S. officials have said the reports mostly were just about ambassadors and other foreign officials discussing their attempts to develop contacts in the Trump family and with his friends before the inauguration. Nunes has repeatedly said he will not reveal who gave him the information, and the Times is reporting it came from Ezra Cohen-Watnick, senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer working on national security issues at the White House Counsel's Office.

The House Intelligence Committee is conducting what is supposed to be an independent investigation into meddling by Russia into the 2016 presidential election.

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