The Republican leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know the identities of any Obama administration officials who made “unmasking” requests that revealed the names of people in President Trump’s orbit in surveillance intercepts during the presidential transition period.
Sen. Lindsey Graham sent a one-page letter to Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell on Tuesday, asking them to declassify any unmasking requests made between Trump’s November 2016 victory and his January 2017 inauguration.
“As you are aware, on May 13, 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a list of the identity of any official who submitted a request to the National Security Agency at any point between November 8, 2016, and January 31, 2017, to unmask the identity of former National Security Adviser, Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.). That list contained the identities of 39 officials who made requests to unmask General Flynn’s identity,” the South Carolina Republican said. “Given the extensive number of requests for the unmasking of General Flynn’s name during this short time period, it raises the question of whether these or other officials sought the unmasking of the identities of other individuals associated with the Trump campaign or transition team.”
Last week, Grenell declassified a National Security Agency document containing a list of Obama administration officials, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who received information in response to “unmasking” requests that revealed Flynn’s identity in surveillance intercepts. Thirty-seven of the 49 unmasking requests appear to have taken place prior to the Flynn’s controversial phone calls with a Russian ambassador. The memo states 16 individuals made the unmasking requests related to the incoming Trump national security adviser and shows dozens of Obama national security and foreign policy officials were authorized recipients of the unmasking information.
Graham said on Tuesday he wants “a list of the names of any officials who requested, between November 8, 2016, and January 31, 2017, to unmask the identities of those associated with the Trump campaign or transition team” along with “the reason given for any such request.”
The senator asked for the names of any Obama officials who “unmasked” Trump, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, one-time Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Trump campaign manager and convicted felon Paul Manafort, Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Trump campaign associate Carter Page, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, or other Trump associates.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman also asked for “an explanation as to why the list released on May 13th did not contain a record showing who unmasked General Flynn’s identity for his phone call with Ambassador Kislyak.”
Also on Tuesday, Sen. Ron Johnson on Wisconsin and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa asked Grenell for unmasking details stretching back to the start of 2016.
“We write now both to reiterate our request for the declassification of additional information related to the unmasking of Americans around the time of the 2016 election, but also to expand the scope of our request to include information as early as January 2016,” the duo said, adding, “We are increasingly concerned that the surveillance of U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump campaign began earlier than the opening of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation in late July 2016.”
Republicans have alleged since 2017 that Obama-era officials improperly unmasked associates of then-candidate Donald Trump’s presidential campaign during the Russia investigation. Democrats have defended the intelligence-gathering process, arguing that the collection of identifying information is inevitable.
Unmasking occurs when U.S. intelligence agencies eavesdropping on foreigners sweep up communications with or about U.S. citizens in what is known as incidental collection. When the intelligence reporting is shared across the government, names of U.S. citizens are typically concealed or masked to protect their identities. The names can be unmasked, however, if U.S. officials make the request.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators about his 2016 conversations on Dec. 22 and Dec. 29 with Kislyak about a United Nations resolution on Israel and sanctions. The U.S. government intercepted Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak, after which former FBI agent Peter Strzok and another agent, believed to be Joseph Pientka, interviewed him on Jan. 24, 2017, about the contents of the discussion.
After changing legal teams, Flynn said at this start of this year he was “innocent of this crime” and sought to withdraw his guilty plea. The Justice Department moved to dismiss the charges against him last week after new evidence was unearthed, but the judge presiding over the case has resisted immediately doing so, inviting outside opinions last week and appointing a retired judge to argue against the motion to dismiss and to explore whether Flynn should be held in contempt for perjury.
Earlier on Tuesday, a declassified version of an email that Obama national security adviser Susan Rice sent herself on the last day of the Obama administration about an early January 2017 Oval Office meeting was also fully declassified and made public too.
Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told Robert Mueller’s special counsel team she first learned the U.S. government had intercepted conversations between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak from President Barack Obama himself, following a White House meeting about the Intelligence Community assessment attended by Yates, Rice, then-Vice President Joe Biden, now-fired FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and others. Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind with Rice and Biden when that meeting concluded to talk more about Flynn.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a December report revealing flaws in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, and footnotes newly declassified by Grenell and Barr show that the FBI was aware that British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier might have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
