Susan Rice reportedly ordered the unmasking of names included in reports collected through “incidental” surveillance and intelligence gathering which affected Donald Trump, his family, and members of his team. This comes after an interview on PBS in which she denied knowing anything about the unmasking of US citizens. She now says that she did but that what she did was not illegal. So the question begs itself to be asked … “why did she lie about it in the first place?”
Possibly because what she did was unethical at best and outright fraudulent at worst. What appears to be happening here is that Susan Rice participated in sort of a “proxy” intelligence gathering on Donald Trump. So rather than outright spy on Trump, his family, and his administration, they conduct an intelligence gathering mission on someone else based on possible ties to Russia, knowing that Trump will get caught up in the dragnet. Since Susan Rice has the power to unmask (or un-retract names from documents that have been retracted to protect identities) then she took advantage of that possibly used the information for her own purposes.
Michael Flynn was the only name that was leaked in this situation most likely because he is the one who had any ties that may have been questionable at all as it relates to Russia. The reason why it’s a very serious topic when it comes to Flynn is because not only did the leak cause a US Government Official to be fired, it was also a felonious charge to leak said information to the press in the first place. And the reason why the information was unmasked and then possibly leaked directly from said unmasking is to try and undermine or overthrow Donald Trump. Possibly working at the behest of Barack Obama in the final days of his Presidency. Any Obama collusion will be difficult to detect. Susan Rice’s involvement however is much easier to detect.
This also affects Republican Devin Nunes. Many of called for him to step down after he was one of the first people to support Trump’s claim of having his “wires tapped” at Trump Tower although indirectly. The newly released information about Susan Rice vindicates him and Trump and further puts a black mark on the Democratic Party.
