Obama aide denies using intel to spy on Trump advisers

Multiple sources tell Fox News that President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, was the one who requested the names of Trump officials be unmasked in intelligence reports that were collected during the campaign and transition. Such incidental collection that involves US citizens typically comes with names redacted to protect their privacy, many USA officials have said.

He continued, “And, in fact, if anything the [national security adviser] asking for identities was a reflection of exactly how much traffic there was involving Trump people and foreign players”.

“I receive those reports as did each of those other officials”, Rice explained, “and there were occasions when, I would receive a report in which a US person was referred to”.

Some lawmakers have called for Rice to testify before congressional panels investigating Russian meddling in the USA election in an effort to help Trump win, but Rice, in the interview, declined to commit to her testifying.

This “unmasking” is a legal authority that experts find to be within the acceptable scope of the national security adviser and the other 20 or so officials with such clearances.

Was there something nefarious about Rice’s actions? So they’d take that question back, they’d put it through a process, and the intelligence community made the determination as to whether or not the identity of that American individual could be provided to me. CNN’s national security correspondent Jim Sciutto-notably, a former collegaue of Rice’s husband and a member of the Obama administration-old Anderson Cooper “this appears to be a story largely ginned up, partly as a distraction from this larger investigation”. What should be done about Susan Rice? This led Hewitt to speculate that she might have been lying. “Instead, she said it was a spontaneous response to an anti-Islam film produced in the United States and cited in the region as an example of anti-Islamicism in the West”. Leaking was more likely done by Rice’s assistant, Ben Rhodes, or another subordinate.

For Paul, a libertarian known for his attempts to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination as Central Intelligence Agency director and the renewal of the Patriot Act, the Rice allegations are fresh fuel in his longstanding crusade against an omnipotent, expansive USA government surveillance program.

She even used some interesting phraseology to drive her point home and claim she had nothing to do with the leaking of Michael Flynn’s name. “I think she should be asked under oath, did she reveal it to The Washington Post“, Paul told the Hill.

To Trump backers, the so-called “unmasking” is evidence that the Obama administration was surveilling the incoming administration for political purposes.

For a good while now, the conservative counter-narrative to the suspicions and allegations involving Donald Trump’s circle and various agents of Russian Federation has been that the real story was the surveillance of innocent American citizens – specifically, Trump associates – by the Obama administration, as part of (or even under the guise of) the government investigation of said suspicions and allegations.