Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Tuesday on “Hannity” that Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell should summarily release the names of those in the Obama administration who ordered the “unmasking” of Michael Flynn’s name in transcripts of his phone calls with Russia’s then-envoy to the U.S.
Earlier this week, Grenell declassified those names, but they have not yet been made available to the public.
“The question for us as a Congress is, ‘Did the Obama Administration use unmasking as a political weapon?’ That’s the question that I want to answer,” Graham told host Sean Hannity.
ACTING DNI GRENELL DECLASSIFIES NAMES OF OBAMA OFFICIALS WHO UNMASKED FLYNN
“The January 5th [2017] meeting, I’m dying to know exactly why [Deputy Attorney General] Sally Yates did not know about the Flynn investigation but President Obama did,” Graham said.
Graham also noted that former Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., while a member of the House Inteliigence Committee, had asked former Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power in October 2017 how many unmasking requests she had made related to American people or entities.
Power responded at the time that she had make “nowhere near the number that I’m reading in the press.” Fox News had reported weeks earlier that Power had made 260 “unmasking” requests in 2016 alone.
According to Graham, the National Security Agency has records of nearby 300 unmasking requests by Power.
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“If she didn’t [request Flynn’s unmasking], who did?” Graham asked. “I would urge Ric Grenell, who has done a terrific job, to release the names of the people who made the unmasking request.”
“[Yates expressing shock] means that the Obama administration intentionally unmasked a conversation with the incoming national security adviser to President Trump,” the senator emphasized. “That is stunning. If I ever find that the intelligence community is unmasking my phone calls with foreign leaders where I discuss foreign policy as a United States Senator, heads will roll.
“I find it unbelievable that the outgoing administration is surveilling the incoming administration. That is incredibly wrong, at the minimum, unethical.”
