Susan Rice, former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, met privately with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday.
Republicans have been interested in interviewing Rice ever since numerous news outlets reported that she sought, in a process known as “unmasking,” to know the identities of people close to President Trump whose communications were captured after the election in surveillance of foreigners by U.S. spy agencies.
Rice is the third high-profile Obama administration official to meet with the Senate Intelligence Committee this week as part of its investigation of Russia’s election interference and possible ties to the Trump campaign.
Obama’s former chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and James Clapper, who was director of national intelligence, were interviewed privately by the committee this week.
“Ambassador Rice met voluntarily with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today as part of the committee’s bipartisan investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Erin Pelton, a spokeswoman for Rice, said in a statement to CNN. “Ambassador Rice appreciates the committee’s efforts to examine Russia’s efforts to interfere, which violated one of the core foundations of American democracy.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., seemed to dismiss the allegations against Rice that she inappropriately unmasked Trump associates.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., led the charge against Rice and eventually recused himself from his panel’s Russia probe after allegations that he was appearing to be too close with the White House.
“The unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes, and I’ll wait to go through our full evaluation to see if there was anything improper that happened,” Burr told CNN. “But clearly there were individuals unmasked. Some of that became public, which it’s not supposed to, and our business is to understand that and explain it.”
