WASHINGTON House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) met a source on White House grounds last week, one day before he alleged that President Donald Trump and his team were subjected to surveillance during the final months of the Obama administration.

Nunes met the source on White House grounds in order to view sensitive information in a secure location, Jack Langer, Nunes communications director, said Monday in a statement, CNN first reported .

There are sensitive compartmented information facilities known as SCIFs on Capitol Hill. But using a congressional facility would have required the source to illegally transport the documents, Langer told The Huffington Post.

The information comprised executive branch documents that have not been provided to Congress. Because of classification rules, the source could not simply put the documents in a backpack and walk them over to the House Intelligence Committee space, he wrote in an email. The White House grounds was the best location to safeguard the proper chain of custody and classification of these documents, so the Chairman could view them in a legal way.

Only individuals with specific approval can enter White House grounds.

Langers explanation of why Nunes met his source on White House grounds is disingenuous and misleading, at a minimum, Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security law, told HuffPost.

There are countless intelligence officials who are authorized to transport classified materials between facilities using secure lock bags, Moss said. It would be reasonable to expect that someone who has unsupervised access to surveillance orders located on a classified network would also have been designated as an authorized courier.

In an interview with CNN s Wolf Blitzer on Monday evening, Nunes insisted there was nothing clandestine about his visit. He also denied coordinating with White House officials and said he is quite sure people in the West Wing had no idea I was there.

He declined, however, to say who in the executive branch cleared his visit.

Nunes also wouldnt say which Trump associates were named in the intelligence documents he reviewed on the White House grounds but said they had nothing to do with Russia.

The revelation about Nunes White House visit adds to speculation that he coordinated with Trumps team before making allegations about the previous administrations information-gathering.