Posted on 05/13/2020 9:35:49 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
GOP Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa) are pressing the Trump administration to release the names of Obama-era officials who "unmasked" former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The Republican senators sent a letter dated Tuesday to Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, urging them to release the names amid increased GOP scrutiny of the former Trump adviser's case.
“One of the most significant unanswered questions about what occurred during the 2016 election is how many Americans were ‘unmasked,’ at whose request, and for what purpose,” the lawmakers wrote.
Johnson and Grassley chair the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Finance committees, respectively. Their letter comes after several media outlets reported that Grenell declassified the names of Obama-era intelligence officials who sought to “unmask” Trump campaign associates such as Flynn who had been swept up in surveillance of foreign officials.
Identifying information of U.S. persons picked up during surveillance on a foreign individual must be hidden, or "masked," under U.S. law. Top intelligence officials can request that the identities be revealed.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
GOP Senators? Who woke them up?
Why do the GOP senators even have to ask or press the Trump administration for names? This is absurd. The list has already been declassified.
barr is not going to release them and the gop can now say “we tried”. They only need to stall for another 6 month and then it will just fade away.
What will they do with the names? Huff and puff?
Bout time.
The scandal isn’t that they unmasked Flynn. It’s that they used the Flynn investigation to use surveillance on the entire Trump team. And members of the Trump team were unmasked. Campaign chatter with little or no foreign intelligence value were sent to the Obama White House.
Calling it surveillance on just Flynn or Papadopolis grossly misrepresents the amount of surveillance.
They know Grennell will defer to Barr and Barr aint budging from his ongoing quest to bury anything coup related. So they can posture and look like tough guys for the cameras without risking the data actually being turned over.
Perhaps there is an intention to save this for release until closer to the election, so that the impact is maximized... Just a guess.
Of course they have to be reminded that Susan Rice and Samantha Power were the keepers of the unmasking process.
Pawer admitted she unmasked hundreds of Americans.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/09/samantha-power-implicated-in-obama-unmasking-scandal/
Dan Bongino seems to think that it will eventually be revealed that Gen. Flynn was under a FISA warrant for surveillance, which is why they had the transcript of his call with the Russian ambassador.
Yep. The Graham plan. Talk tough and do nothing. It will work for him up until November and then he can go back to defending Mueller.
Bongino’s podcast yesterday was interesting. It was an “if”, but what if Flynn was NOT unmasked. What if they had a FISA on him and there was no need to unmask him?
I know its speculation and he said that, but I am beginning to wonder and he made a pretty compelling case. The biggest downside for me is that these people leaked anything and everything to damage Trump so how/why would they have kept this secret at the beginning of the administration?
Then again, we did not find out about Page and the FISA warrant for some time and the Flynn prosecution was occurring if I remember the timeline? Did they scramble to get the FISA on him as part of their plan to stop (Flynn) from grabbing the levers of power?
I don’t know if Bongino is correct and he said he might have it wrong, but I do know there is much more that we do not know. How much of it we learn is speculative.
Chuck Grassley has always been good, unlike Linda who never backs up his bold talk. Unfortunately Senate rules require a non partisan vote to issue a subpoena and with the current bunch of rats in the Senate that never happens.
Any chance this list will be..."leaked"...to a news outlet? No? Gee whiz, I wonder why not?
Per Sundance: Flynn was an investigation target and once he joined the Trump campaign, Flynn was the virus by which they accumulated info from everyone he spoke to. The people Flynn spoke to were unmasked. Flynn was not unmasked.
Agree. Good comment.
Flynn was the ‘predicate’ to justify a larger surveillance effort against Team Trump.
Conservative Tree House has a great article on this point. General Flynn was not unmaked since he was under active investigation which included wire tapping his phone calls.
Per Sundance: Flynn was an investigation target and once he joined the Trump campaign, Flynn was the virus by which they accumulated info from everyone he spoke to. The people Flynn spoke to were unmasked. Flynn was not unmasked.
So naturally at this point the Deep State wants to punt the Flynn issue until after the election. Ongoing criminal procedings can’t comment, yada yada yada. Graham was quite clear he has no interest in touching the Flynn football. Whole lot of smoke there....
Release them to the Pubic first and then to the GOP Senators. It’s the only thing that keeps the weak-kneed GOP from doing something stupid.
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