Eli Lake mentioned this clip in his report about Rice this morning but you should take three minutes to watch it since, uh, it might factor into the news cycle over the next week or six. Lake noted that Rice wasn’t asked specifically here about “unmasking” any Americans’ identities, but that’s probably because she claims to know nothing of Nunes’s accusations in their entirety. He alleged that Trump transition members were swept up incidentally in surveillance of foreigners, that some names were “unmasked,” and that the info was circulated among an unknown number of top natsec officials. Nope, Rice tells Judy Woodruff, I don’t know anything about that. If Lake’s reporting is accurate, how can this answer be spun as anything but a bald-faced lie? After all, lying on television is what Susan Rice does.
David Frum goes to bat for Rice, sort of:
Imagine the National Security Adviser wanting to know who was clandestinely collaborating with an espionage attack on the nation’s security
— David Frum (@davidfrum) April 3, 2017
Right, but if you believe Nunes, the intel reports he saw had nothing to do with Russia. Is there some other country of interest with whom a Trump transition member or members was in regular contact, in a manner that might have had value as foreign intelligence? (Remember, Mike Flynn lobbied for Turkey and was recently accused of having met with Turkish officials last year about possibly “removing” Fethullah Gulen from the U.S.) If not, why were these reports being circulated with the identities of the Americans involved evidently clear to all?
In lieu of an exit question, go read Stephen Miller on the Obama administration’s long history of shady surveillance.
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