USA: Spicer protests journalist's grilling on Nunes' revelation to Trump about investigation

SOT, Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary (English): "Well, two things. One is, it wasn’t -- as has been asked before, to ask me why he did something -- he made a decision, he briefed -- hold on, you're getting there. I've seen enough of you, Peter. I know where you were going. But the reality is, is that he made a decision. He briefed the press first. No one had a problem, by the way, in the press corps getting briefed before everybody else. He went down and he briefed your colleagues before he briefed anybody else. I don’t hear too much crying about that. The reality is -- and then he made a statement and said, I'm going to come down to the White House and share this information with the President, as has just been noted. He didn’t give us a heads-up. He told us he made an announcement, he said I'm coming down to the White House, asked for time to share this with the President. And I think part of the reason, to be clear and to your question, is specifically to say that there's a big difference between any discussion about what's going on in Russia and why this intelligence was picked up. His comments yesterday were very clear the intelligence and the information that he picked up had nothing to do with Russia. And I think he felt as though, according to his own words, that he had an obligation to make sure the President knew what he had discovered. That's it, plain and simple."
SOT, Journalist (English): "So to be clear, though, just because appearances matter on this, doesn’t the White House have a concern that it creates the appearance that there was potentially interference by the President that he was included in conversations about the investigation because it was completed?"
SOT, Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary (English): "My concern, to be perfectly blunt with you, is that it's always -- you seem to have an obsession with the process and not the substance. At some point, isn’t --"
SOT, Journalist (English): "Isn't the President --"
SOT, Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary (English): "No, no, hold on, hold on."
SOT, Journalist (English): "The President is the one who wants the conclusion. He asked for it."
SOT, Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary (English): "I understand that."
SOT, Journalist (English): "So I'm asking, why didn’t he ask for details before it was completed?"
SOT, Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary (English): "Because as Chairman Nunes said -- and again, I'm just going to make it clear -- because he said that he wanted to make it very clear that the discussion and the revelations that he had were not -- did not regard anything to do with Russia, and he wanted the President to understand that." *MULTIPLE SHOTS AT SOURCE*
SOT, Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary (English): "No, I think there’s a difference -- he came out and briefed people on what he knew at the time, and said he was literally going to get further briefs and would have further updates. That’s a big difference than reporting and making a serious allegation. In fact, he was doing quite the opposite. He was vindicating the President and saying, 'There is something that you need to know about the substance of the allegations that are being made against you.' And while that may or may not be the case, because some of what I’ve seen --"
SOT, Journalist (English): "But if he had not been vindicating him, wouldn’t it have been just as important for the President to learn?"
SOT, Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary (English): "Sure. And I think maybe he would have, and then you probably wouldn’t have any concern with that, would you?" *MULTIPLE SHOTS AT SOURCE*
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer fervently defended the Republican Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee, Devin Nunes, for revealing to US President Donald Trump that US citizens involved in his transition team had their information picked up by US intelligence services. Spicer was speaking at a White House press briefing in Washington DC on Wednesday.
Spicer countered a journalist's question on the appropriate nature of such revelation, saying "He briefed the press first. No one had a problem, by the way, in the press corps getting briefed before anybody else. He went down and he briefed your colleagues before he briefed anybody else. I don’t hear too much crying about that."
He went on to protest the continued questions from the journalist, saying, “My concern, to be perfectly blunt with you, is that it's always -- you seem to have an obsession with the process and not the substance.”
Defending Nunes, Spicer also added, "I think part of the reason, to be clear and to your question, is specifically to say that there's a big difference between any discussion about what's going on in Russia and why this intelligence was picked up. His comments yesterday were very clear the intelligence and the information that he picked up had nothing to do with Russia. And I think he felt as though, according to his own words, that he had an obligation to make sure the President knew what he had discovered. That's it, plain and simple."
On Wednesday, Nunes stated there were "numerous occasions the intelligence community [had] incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition," during "normal" surveillance unrelated to an ongoing FBI probe into claims of alleged interference by Russia in the 2016 US presidential election.