Susan Rice and Legalized Political Spying

It has long been clear that the Obama administration surveilled Trump’s team and now one method of that surveillance is coming into clarity. The ‘smoking gun’ reported by James Rosen has been revealed with multiple outlets reporting that Susan Rice, the National Security Adviser for Obama, requested the unmasking of Trump officials’ names in foreign intelligence reports. Today, Rice confirmed that she had made such requests, but asserted they were proper. News reports reiterated Congressman Nunes’s claim that these reports had nothing to do with Russia and held little to no foreign intelligence value. This alone is a major blow to defenses that this was normal activity. When taking the broader investigation and its timeline into account, a potentially a breathtaking abuse of governmental power with a fig leaf of legal cover. The most recent revelations only further the perception that the broader investigation has been politicized from the beginning.

The earliest reported monitoring of Trump began during the Republican primary.