As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes should not have gone first to tell President Trump what he’d learned about the possible surveillance of the Trump campaign by the intelligence community during the Obama administration. As a matter of comity, at the least, he should have brought that information to his Democratic counterpart on the committee, Adam Schiff.

But that error should not be used by the media as a reason to ignore the significance of Nunes’ information. If he is correct that the Obama administration surveilled the Trump campaign, we have a matter at least as significant—if not more so—than the possibility, still unconfirmed in any way, that the Trump campaign collaborated or coordinated with Russia.

The report by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, although based on anonymous sources, adds significant credibility to the idea that the intelligence community during the previous administration acted unlawfully. Whether White House officials actually encouraged this is a Watergate-level issue that should be the first priority of any congressional investigations.  

While there were always grounds for suspicion--many media outlets had reported leaks about communications between Trump campaign officials and officials of the Russian government, and even a telephone conversation between President Trump and Australian prime minister—a column in the Wall Street Journal last week by Peter Hoekstra, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, made clear how significant and unprecedented these leaks were.