President Barack Obama
President Barack ObamaReuters

A day after a bombshell revelation by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes that the Trump transition team had been included in surveillance efforts by US intel agencies in the waning days of the Obama administration, sources say the committee will likely reveal an even greater bombshell in the coming days.

President Donald Trump faced scathing criticism for weeks for his March 4th comment on Twitter claiming that President Obama had ordered clandestine monitoring of the Trump campaign during the 2016 US presidential election.

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

While little evidence to support the claim was found initially, on Wednesday Rep. Nunes addressed reporters with a startling revelation which breathed new life into Trump’s allegations of espionage and interference by the Obama administration.

According to Nunes, US intelligence agencies collected data on communications by Trump transition team members and “unmasked” the team and its staff, releasing the non-transmogrified transcripts of monitored communications involving the Trump team – transcripts which were subsequently leaked to the press in the case of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Taken together with the fact that President Obama took the unusual step of easing restrictions on data sharing between intelligence agencies in the last days of his presidency, Wednesday’s revelation has raised suspicions that the White House used its monitoring capabilities to interfere with the incoming Trump administration.

But that still fell short of Trump’s claim that the Obama administration had the Trump team’s “wires tapped”. Trump claimed he used the expression in a general way, alludijng to all kinds of surveillance.

Now, however, a source privy to the investigation by the House committee say members believe an even greater bombshell is on the way – “smoking gun” proof that the Obama administration directly spied on the Trump campaign and possibly Donald Trump himself.

Speaking with Fox News on Thursday, the source claimed that House Intelligence Committee members expected the smoking gun to be revealed in the coming days – likely sometime next week.