Democrats and some in the media sought to discredit potential bombshell revelations from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) this week with complaints over “process.”

It started Wednesday when Nunes held two news conferences on new findings regarding surveillance of members of President Donald Trump’s transition team. In speaking out, Nunes bitterly disappointed Democrats — who, ironically, have been relying on leaks and hyper-criticism of Trump to make their case that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian hackers during the 2016 campaign.

“There seems to be this obsession with the process. At some point, there should be a concern about the substance.”

But in a new twist, Nunes told reporters on Capitol Hill that members of Trump’s transition team had been “unmasked” for no discernible  intelligence purpose after being monitored in an incidental manner. Nunes also claimed “details with little or no apparent intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence reports.” The ostensible goal? To hurt Trump and to encourage leaks.

The news shocked Washington. The issue wasn’t supposed to play out like this. Trump was totally wrong on Trump Tower being “wiretapped.”

So Democrats protested Nunes’ surprising openness with the media. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking minority member on the House Intel Committee, said Democrats were not briefed first. Schiff said he had “grave concerns” about Nunes’ claim.

The media helped Democrats smack Nunes down — oddly, for informing them of his findings.

“[Nunes] ran down to the White House yesterday to brief the president on what he found,” said Jonathan Karl, speaking to Robin Roberts on “GMA.”

“Robin, that’s the kind of thing you would expect a White House staffer to do, not the chairman of a committee that is investigating the White House itself, or associates of the White House,” said Karl.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Nunes was a “stooge.”

Former presidential candidate Evan McMullin, a Never-Trumper, tweeted: “Nunes’ claims appear increasingly baseless, but truth isn’t the goal. The goal is a Trumpian alternative reality.”

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The remark was retweeted by CNN’s Brian Stelter, who, like McMullin, is largely defined by his anti-Trump criticism.

“If the Bush administration — with all of the ‘power-abusing neocon’ imagery liberals unloaded — surveilled the incoming Obama team, would the media treat it as acceptable?” asked Tim Graham, research director for the Media Research Center, in an email to LifeZette. “They’d have a fit.”

Trump made waves early on March 4, when he typed out a now-infamous series of tweets: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

Trump added: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

The Democrats protested, but the media went especially ballistic. White House press secretary Sean Spicer was grilled about the tweets for the next two weeks. Apologies were demanded.

Inside the White House, when the president was spotted, reporters shouted questions about the wiretapping claim. Two German journalists asked about it at Trump’s joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on March 17.

Nunes made clear what he has unearthed does not show Trump was directly wiretapped, or spied upon. But Nunes suggested incidental information on Trump was collected and spread around by officials within the Obama administration.

Asked about Nunes’ motivations on Thursday, Spicer criticized the press for being obsessed with the “process” of how Nunes disclosed the information to the public.

“There seems to be this obsession with the process: How did he get here, when did he go, what was the reaction?” said Spicer. “At some point, there should be a concern about the substance. That’s a very serious revelation that he’s made about what happened during the 2016 election with respect to our side and some of the things that happened.”

The news enlightens observers on what to expect as Nunes and the House Intelligence Committee continue to unearth information on Trump’s claim.

And there’s more coming. Late Thursday, James Rosen of Fox News reported that Republican congressional investigators expect a “smoking gun,” firmly establishing that the Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team, and possibly the president-elect himself.

The news is expected “this week,” Rosen reported. Spicer can likely expect more complaints about the information surfacing.