Tag: Unmasking

Susan Power – The New Face of the Unmasking Scandal

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.

5 Times Obama Didn’t Appoint a Special Prosecutor
I saw a meme recently mocking the Trump team for lawyering up. There’s a reason Obama and his team never needed to lawyer up. They had Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch as the attorney generals. Neither of them had any interest in looking at wrongdoing by the Obama administration. Even the thought of Obama hiring a special prosecutor to investigate himself is hilarious.
 
Here are five times Obama should have appointed a special prosecutor but didn’t:
 
1. Fast and furious – the gun running scandal where the US sold weapons to Mexican drug lords that were then lost and later used to kill US border agents. The murder of the border agents was initially used by the administration to call for greater gun control, until it was discovered where those guns came from.
 
2. The IRS targeting scandal – the IRS targeted right-leaning political groups by denying their applications and subjecting them to unreasonable questioning. Congress investigated, but no charges were ever filed by the Obama DOJ and the administration did not appoint a special prosecutor. The person responsible, Lois Lerner, never faced legal consequences.  Multiple calls for a special prosecutor were ignored by the Obama DOJ.
 
3. Benghazi – not only did the administration lie to the public, but Hillary Clinton violated the law when she distributed classified information about the Benghazi incident and destroyed classified information regarding the incident.
 
4. Hillary Clinton’s email server – despite the destruction of evidence, and Loretta Lynch completely invalidating the investigation by meeting with Bill Clinton on his private jet, a special prosecutor was not appointed. This is despite evidence that Obama knew about her server and that the Obama DOJ made unethical deals with Clinton attorneys to help destroy and hide evidence in the case.
 
5. The Iran Nuclear Deal payment – This was when Obama negotiated a poorly structured nuclear deal with Iran, and then sealed it with a huge cash payment delivered in the middle of the night. After the payment was discovered, the Obama administration claimed it was an old debt from a couple Iranian governments ago when we cancelled an arms shipment to them during their revolution.
 
Any of these were more salacious than the idea that Trump associates may have sought opposition research from the Russians. But none were investigated by any body with actual authority. None resulted in special counsels.
 
This also doesn’t include the smaller things, like the raid on the Gibson Guitar factory, Solyndra, or NSA spying on reporters.  And it doesn’t include the bigger things that came to light more recently such as Obama spying on Trump associates and unmasking them. I haven’t even touched on the leaks.
Trump fired James Comey.  Obama’s first year in office was a blood bath for Bush administration attorneys and officials.  The difference so far between Trump and Obama is that Obama had more scandals and fewer people in his government that had any interest in noticing.