OPINION:
The latest in the fast-moving story about Susan Rice’s alleged unmasking of several aides to President Donald Trump’s campaign is that the data request was for “detailed spreadsheets” of intercepted telephone calls.
A former U.S. attorney named Joseph diiGenova told the Daily Caller: “What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals.”
That’s quite a bit different than data on Trump being mistakenly swept into a intelligence operation.
“The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said, to the news outlet. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”
The Daily Caller and Breitbart reported confirmation of diGenova’s comments from “other official sources with direct knowledge.”
And one more tidbit: These spreadsheets were allegedly requested by Rice a year before the 2016 presidential election.
Meanwhile, Fox News has been reporting the unmasked names of Trump’s aides were turned over to officials within the National Security Council and the Department of Defense, as well as to James Clapper, then-President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, and to John Brennan, CIA director under Obama.
Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser under Obama — just a slot behind Rice — was also named by Fox News as participating in the alleged White House-fueled data collection operation.
No wonder Obama’s been largely silent on the whole Trump Tower wiretapping matter.
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