Ryan Lizza: “Last Monday morning, shortly before the start of the hearing, a senior White House official told me, ‘You’ll see the setting of the predicate. That’s the thing to watch today.’ He suggested that I read a piece in The Hill about incidental collection. The article posited that if ‘Trump or his advisors were speaking directly to foreign individuals who were the target of U.S. spying during the election campaign, and the intelligence agencies recorded Trump by accident, it’s plausible that those communications would have been collected and shared amongst intelligence agencies.'”

“The White House clearly indicated to me that it knew Nunes would highlight this issue. ‘It’s backdoor surveillance where it’s not just incidental, it’s systematic,’ the White House official said. ‘Watch Nunes today.'”

Jonathan Swan: “With the credibility of his Russia investigation under question — even from Republicans — Nunes needs to prove he hasn’t colluded with the Trump administration. Lizza’s reporting surely doesn’t help.”

“The storm around House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) intensified after it was revealed that he secretly visited the White House grounds the day before announcing incidental surveillance of President Trump’s transition team,” The Hill reports.

“Nunes struggled to provide an explanation for the unusual trip on Monday even as Democrats demanded that he step aside as leader of the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the U.S. presidential election.”

“The visit raised questions about whether the White House itself was the source of the mysterious intelligence that Nunes, but no one else on Capitol Hill, has seen.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the committee, called on Nunes to recuse himself.