A new name has surfaced in the unmasking scandal. UN Ambassador Susan Power made hundreds of unmasking requests in the last year of the Obama Presidency. Unmasking is the process by which individuals caught up in warrantless NSA surveillance are named in intelligence reports. It is a violation of the 4th amendment when misused.

During the Trump campaign and transition period, there were leaks of damaging information only discovered by government surveillance. At some point, Trump officials were unmasked in US intelligence reports and those reports were leaked to the press. The New York Times was one that reported Trump ties to Russia that were gleaned from NSA wiretaps.  They have since attempted to back off the claim.

Illegally unmasking a US citizen and leaking that information is a felony and carries up to 10 years in jail. The prime people of interest are former CIA director Brennan, Susan Rice, and now Susan Power.

So why would a UN Ambassador be caught up in this? The potential answers to that question truly scare me. If Susan Power was leaking intel on the Trump transition team to other UN member nations, that would be a huge development. Don’t forget, much of the Russia collusion speculation came from intel provided by the UK, Germany and the Ukraine. Were they doing the spying? Or was the US doing the spying, laundering the info through them, and then using it to smear Trump and attempt to influence the election outcome and bolster the resistance movement?

A crime was committed. The fact that we know anything about the Russia investigation is indicative of the many illegal leaks. What we know shows that those leaks include information only our intelligence agencies should know.  Brennan and Rice have both been openly hostile towards the Trump administration.  It will be interesting to see where the investigation of Susan Power goes.