Nunes' Document Disclosure Faces Legal Challenges (Audio)

it was engaging in surveillance of foreign targets. Nuna has subsequently apologized to the Intelligence Committe's Democratic members for how he disclosed the information about the surveillance, but the incident has raised questions about whether the Intelligence Committee can conduct a thorough, bipartisan investigation into questions about Russian interference in last year's election and possible contacts between the Trump campaign

and Russia. Here to talk to us about what's going on with Chairman Nunez and the Intelligence Committee are Andrew Kent, professor at Fordham Law School, and uh Eliza Gutian, co director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the

Brennan Center. UM, thank you both for being here today. Andrew, this is a somewhat confusing and um seemingly strange situation here where you have the uh, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee having gone to the White House with information when it's possible the committee is going to be investigating the president. How unusual is this situation in your view? I think it's extremely unusual, and uh, you know, a number of folks on the Republican side, including John McCain,

have said as much. Um. Obviously there are close political links between a president and members of his party in the Congress. But when the president's own conduct and the conduct of his campaign and close aids to him are the subject of such an incredibly important and sensitive investigation that the House Intelligence Committee is undergoing, Uh, you know, this behavior by by the chairman is really extraordinary and

quite inappropriate. Liza, It's still unclear because new Naz has refused to say where he got these documents from their supposedly classified documents. If they are really classified documents and he showed them or told the press about them without telling his committee members or anyone else, is that a

prosecutor prosecutable offense. Well, certainly, Nuns himself and many others on his committee have really made a point of underscoring how dangerous it is to leak classified information and have emphasized that people who do leak such information should be prosecuted, so if they are to be believed, it absolutely is a prosecutable offense. And it does appear that some of what uh Mr Nunez was saying in his press conferences was classified information. Now the president is able to be

classify information, uh quickly and easily. And there is a question in this case about whether there was coordination between the White House and and Newness in his announcements. And recently we learned that Noons was actually at the White House the day before he gave his press conference using some secure compartment and facilities there. That's a place where you go to look at classified information. So you know, there's some real questions here about where this information came from.

And and and frankly, you know, if the president did be classified information so he could reveal it, I think that's that's more disturbing than than it is reassuring. Well, Andrew, let's say, you know, putting aside this situation, you end up with a where you have an intelligence Committee chairman finding out information that might be relevant to an investigation or to the White House. Um in some way, you know, that's important. What is the appropriate protocol here, what's supposed

to happen. Well, there's not really a protocol in a situation that's as politically charged and abnormal as this, But I mean, I think we would hope that, you know, in any kind of extraordinary circumstance, we fall back on the kind of tried and true procedures, and those procedures would be, um, you know, bipartisanship on the committee, uh, you know, letting the Democratic members see it, letting the expert staff who um uh you know who served the

members of that committee be involved and things, and then um, if necessary, making a decision you know, at the committee level, to communicate with with executive branch agencies about this and ideally to do it uh privately first before you know, going and having a quite confusing news conference first at the Capitol and then a second one at the White House, like the chairman did. Lies about a minute here. Noon has served as an advisor to Trump's transition team. So

should he be investigating this at all? Some of the people he must know when he may have been involved in some aspect of this. I mean, that's an excellent question. I'm not sure that Initially, the fact that he didn't serve on the on the Trump transition team or as

an advisor. I'm not sure that that should disqualify him out of hand to be leading an investigation, But if you add some of the behavior we've since seen since then, and particularly these press conferences, I think that does raise some very serious questions about whether he's conducting an impartial investigation or whether he's really trying to act to support the Trump administration, which is not his job as an overseer on the committee, let alone as someone who is

investigating potential misconduct by the administration. Andrew, are we at a point now where Senator McCain is right and we need to have a Congress really needs to appoint a select committee that's independent of the Intelligence Committee to investigate the allegations about possible Trump campaign contacts with Russia and Russian interference in last year's presidential election. You know, I think in theory we are, but I also see no

indication that it's likely to happen. Uh. You know, neither Miss McConnell on the Senate side or Paul Ryan on the House side have given any indication that they're interested in doing that. Um so, Uh, you know, certainly the Chairman Nuns his actions calling to call into real question, you know, his independence from the White House and his willingness to aggressively dig into information that might be harmful to the White House. But uh, you know, I think

that's all. That's all we're going to have for the time being. Is is is the current investigations in in the in the current setting they're taking place, Liza, among congressional committees, the two intelligence committees, one in the Senate, one in the House. We're established with this unique charge that they be bipartisan to the most extent possible. In the past, have you seen either of these committees do that kind of work? Yes? Actually, I think the Senate

Intelligence Committee has been remarkably bipartisan in most things. And there's certainly been exceptions to that, but for the most part, they tend to work together and to work together quite amicably and well, and often share conclusions. And even when they don't share conclusions. For example, the Torture Report, the

report on the CIA's enhanced interrogation program. Uh, many Republicans dissented from or did not sign that report, but it still did not create sort of the level of animosity and infighting that we are seeing right now in the House Intelligence Committee. The House Intelligence Committee has traditionally been a bit more marked bipartisan differences, but I would say that what we're seeing right now um is sort of

taking it to a new level. Andrew Eli Lake, Bloomberg View columnist, spoke with Chairman Nunez recently and he's put up a column on Bloomberg View uh saying that you know, Nonez has explained that he to Eli Lake that he in fact had gone to the White House ground to view these documents, and that the documents that he has

seen were widely shared during the Obama administration. Appears with both the White House and among other members of the intelligence community, and it sort of raises the specter of whether or not it's possible that, in fact, the Obama administration was using intelligence to try to keep track of the Trump campaign or the Trump transition. Might there really be something legitimate here and what Nonez was doing and

sharing this information with the White House? It's possible, and the Lake's article today was certainly a useful piece of this puzzle, but it's still quite hard to know exactly what's going on, in part because Nunas has said both contradictory sort of confusing things. I mean, he said from the beginning, and he's reiterated that he believes this was

lawfully collected intelligence. And he suggested that it occurred under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which means that it was you know, though it's a complicated statute, and we can generalize to say it means that it was a court approve uh to target somebody who is an agent of a foreign power. Um. But then, um, you know it's reported in the Lake piece that you reference. Uh, Nunez is saying that conversations between Trump and his senior advisors

about the presidential transition, uh, we're somehow picked up. Um. And I have a very hard time in my mind reconciling how there could have been lawful, lawful communications of agents of the of a foreign government being swept up that included uh, those kinds of details. It's just it's quite confusing, and unfortunately I don't have, you know, I don't have a teriffic answer about exactly what's going on here.

About thirty seconds, um, Liza, one of the Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell on the committee has written for The Guardian and slam Nunez, saying he seems to be running his own intelligence service, receiving classified information exclusively briefing the president. Is this likely? Is this a committee it's likely going to be able to work together? Yeah, that's certainly a concern.

And obviously the ranking member of the committee, autom Shift, has also been quite critical of Newness and his behavior. In this case, Shift seems to be in essence that the member of the committee who is most concerned with the actual Russian interference with the election and possible tries ties to the Trump campaign that the committee is supposed

to be investigating. Uh. And at the hearing that took place last week, Representative Shift read through a long list of the circumstantial evidence that has come up that's been quite damning, that appears to, uh, you know, at least apply some ties between the Russian interference and the Trump campaign, and Liza, we're going to have to leave it there. Are thanks to Liza Guardtine of the Brennan Center for Justice and Andrew Kent of Fordham University for being with us on Bloomberg Law