It was bound to happen   as soon as House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes said that he had evidence people in Trump s transition team were recorded during foreign surveillance activities, Trump and his loyal subjects within the Republican Party pounced. Never mind what else Nunes said that the information collected was incidental and probably legal the GOP saw their opportunity to clear their president s name and paint Obama as the evil, criminal, dictatorial president they always  knew  he was.The National Republican Congressional Committee sent out emails this morning with the subject line,  Confirmed: Obama spied on Trump.  They quoted Politico:  Trump transition members were under surveillance during Obama administration.  And they quoted Nunes:  Members of the Donald Trump transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under surveillance during the Obama administration following November s election. Here s the full letter:Whoa. as flagged by the DCCC, Republicans are now fundraising on the false claim that Obama spied on Trump pic.twitter.com/AKzw3jAAQJ  Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) March 23, 2017Is there context? Of course not. That s nonexistent in their letter, but here s some: The quote from the Politico story is the caption on top of the video they posted of Nunes  press conference. And here s some more relevant context from that story: Nunes set off the firestorm with a news conference earlier in the day in which he described the surveillance of Trump aides through what s called  incidental collection,  something he noted was routine and legal. Such collection can occur when a person inside the United State communicates with a foreign target of U.S. surveillance. In such cases, the identities of U.S. citizens are supposed to be shielded   but can be  unmasked  by intelligence officials under certain circumstances. Furthermore, Nunes himself said: This is a normal, incidental collection, based on what I could collect. It alarms him anyway, for some reason.However, more significant than that is the fact that Nunes also said yesterday that he still has no evidence Trump, his team, or his campaign were wiretapped or otherwise the target of surveillance by the Obama administration. None. Zero, zip, zilch, nada.  I have said this for many, many weeks,  he told White House reporters.What we have now is a party that s actively and knowingly spreading Trump s lies to gain an edge they know they re losing. Should investigations conclude that not only did a sitting president level a demonstrably false accusation against his predecessor, but also that he colluded with Russia during the election cycle, the GOP is sunk.Featured image by Mark Wilson via Getty Images