President Trump’s spokeswoman is criticizing White House reporters who failed to ask former Obama administration officials about their roles in the investigation into Trump campaign staff and advisers, including retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Responding to a question regarding whether Trump has considered pardoning Barack Obama for his alleged role in unmasking Flynn, Kayleigh McEnany pivoted to the reporters in the room whom she accused of failing to investigate the former president and his associates fully.
“Who I did speak to about President Obama and the unmasking of general Michael Flynn are the people in this room,” she said. “I laid out a series of questions that any good journalist would want to answer about why people were unmasked and all sorts of questions, and I just wanted to follow up with you guys on that. Did anyone take it upon themselves to pose any questions about Michael Flynn and unmasking the President Obama spokesperson?”
McEnany paused for a moment before feigning surprise at what she and the Trump administration view as a failure by the media to thoroughly vet the timeline of events surrounding investigations into the communications of Flynn during the transition period between Obama and Trump.
Flynn was ousted from his position as a top Trump adviser after communications he had with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak in December 2016 were leaked to the press. Flynn, whose identity should have remained sealed by top U.S. intelligence agents, was unmasked to 39 authorized individuals of the Obama administration, including former Vice President Joe Biden, although it is not clear if he, in fact, asked for Flynn to be unmasked.
FBI agents found “no derogatory information” on the communications between Flynn and Kislyak, but agent Peter Strzok demanded the investigation into Flynn continue. Trump has accused members of the FBI of being “human scum,” and McEnany presented a set of slides with detailed questions for the reporters to use while engaging with Obama officials about their alleged roles in the unmasking of Flynn.
“I would like to lay out a series of questions, and perhaps if I write them out in a slide format, maybe we’re visual learners, and you guys will follow up with journalistic curiosity,” said McEnany. “So, No. 1: Why did the Obama administration use opposition research funded by a political organization and filled with foreign dirt to surveil members of the Trump campaign? No. 2: Why was Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn unmasked, not by the intel community entirely, but by Obama’s chief of staff, by the former Vice President, Joe Biden, by Susan Rice, by the treasury secretary?”
“I mean, this is extraordinary,” McEnany continued. “And if it were political appointees in the Trump administration, I can guarantee you I’d have questions in my inbox right now, but apparently Obama’s spokesperson does not. Why was Flynn’s identity leaked in a criminal act? It is a criminal act to leak the identity of Michael Flynn to the press, but it happened.”
McEnany prompted more questions relating to members of Obama’s cabinet, including former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former national security adviser Susan Rice. Rice’s actions, in particular, have been criticized after it was revealed that she wrote an email to herself on the very last day of the Obama White House, suggesting that the president and members of the intelligence community had done everything “by the book” during their investigations into the Trump campaign and administration.
“It’s a long weekend, you guys have three days to follow up on those questions, and I certainly hope the next time I ask, some hands go up because Obama’s spokesperson should be asked those questions because President Trump’s spokespeople certainly would be,” finished McEnany.
