Devin Nunes promises swift action after Adam Schiff releases personal phone records

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced Saturday that he will pursue legal action after the House Intelligence Committee obtained and released some of his private phone records as part of the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

"I believe I am the first member of ever to have [my] phone records exposed like this," Nunes said on Fox News Saturday.

"We're definitely going to take legal action," he added. "We need to get to court to try to stop that from happening again."

Ahead of the House Judiciary Committee's first public impeachment hearing, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) released his committee's 300-page report on impeachment. The report included private phone records for Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, journalist John Solomon, and Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, among others.

Schiff refused to say how or why he obtained the records.

However, the reason for their inclusion in Schiff's report was clear: to bolster arguments that Trump's staunchest defenders have themselves engaged in nefarious actions.

"Of course, over the two weeks before Thanksgiving, I think they were embarrassed by their lack of evidence they were able to present through the hearings," Nunes said on Fox News. "So, what happened is, the Friday before Thanksgiving, this fake news story drops about me supposedly being in Vienna."

"And then we get back from Thanksgiving and then — lo and behold — my name along with one of my current staff people...and a former staff person, all of a sudden our civil liberties are violated because our phone records show up in this report," he continued.

Nunes this week filed a $435 million defamation lawsuit against CNN after the news outlet published a story claiming he met with former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin last December to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.