Fox News’ Adam Housley is reporting that sources within the intelligence community have confirmed some of what Rep. Devin Nunes told reporters last week about the unmasking of names in intelligence documents to embarrass the incoming Trump administration. Housley summarized the information he was given in a series of tweets Friday morning:

Our sources: This surveillance that led to the unmasking of private names of American citizens started before Trump was the GOP nominee.

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) March 31, 2017

Our sources:The person who did the unmasking is "very well known, very high up, very senior, in the intelligence world & is not in the FBI

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) March 31, 2017

So it’s not James Comey in other words.

Our sources: Unmasking the names and then spreading the names was for political purposes that have nothing to do with national security

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) March 31, 2017

Our sources: "It had everything to do with hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team"

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) March 31, 2017

I will also note…my sources are "not Trump people" They are "just frustrated with the politicalization of our intelligence agencies"

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) March 31, 2017

In a video report on the story that aired today, Housley said his sources were motivated to come forward by a report at the New York Times yesterday which apparently outed two people who helped Rep. Devin Nunes access information during a meeting in the Old Executive Office Building. Housley’s sources claim the two people who helped Nunes “navigate” to the information were not his sources. In fact, Nunes had been aware of the information since January but had been unable to view the documents themselves because of what Housley’s IC sources describe as “stonewalling” by the agencies in question.

All of this jibes with what Rep. Nunes told reporters last Wednesday:

“So, first, I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition,”  Nunes said. He added, “Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

“Third, I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked,” Nunes said. “And fourth and finally, I want to be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia, or the investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team,” he added.

Nunes has been accused by Democrats of trying to back up Trump’s claim that he was “wiretapped” by President Obama. In fact, Nunes has always said there was no evidence for that claim. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some IC misconduct going on regarding the Trump team. That’s what Nunes said last week and it’s what Housley’s sources are saying now. Of course, Democrats aren’t interested in talking about wrongdoing against the Trump team but if the evidence exists that Americans were unmasked for domestic political purposes, then that lead should be pursued.

Even Joe Scarborough, who declared this part of a White House deflection effort just a couple days ago, seems to be coming around to the idea that there is a story here, albeit a very small one relative to the larger question of Russian interference in the election: