There’s a very large suburban and rural myth that Susan Rice is a political hack and bag-woman for the Obama Administration. That she somehow misled the American public and told them a story about the Benghazi attack that was somehow different either from the “truth” or what intelligence agencies thought at the time. It is now being claimed that as National Security Advisor she deliberately searched the NSA database for Trump advisors who may have been in contact with foreign governments and then leaked that information to the public via the press in order to shame and/or embarrass Trump.
None of that is true.
Rand Paul is hopping mad about this.
“I believe Susan Rice abused the system and she did it for political purposes. She needs to be brought in and questioned under oath,” he said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “This was a witch hunt that began with the Obama administration, sour grapes on the way out the door. They were going to use the intelligence apparatus to attack Trump, and I think they did.”
It’s gotten so bad that Mitch McConnel has asked the Senate Intelligence committee to investigate unmasking by Rice.
This is all ignoring a few stubborn facts. The unmasked incidental collection that was spoon-fed to Devin Nunez after he hopped in and out of an Uber during his clandestine super-secret visit to the White House only to go rushing to the press, and then back to tell … the White House… didn’t involve contacts with Russia.
The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the intelligence and to avoid angering Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis. Officials say Mr. Cohen-Watnick has been reviewing the reports from his fourth-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where the National Security Council is based.
The officials’ description of the intelligence is in line with Mr. Nunes’s characterization of the material, which he said was not related to the Russia investigations when he first disclosed its existence.
These were normal communications between foreign nations who were either discussing members of the Trump transition team or occasionally talking with them — which is perfectly normal and legal. It’s also perfectly normal and legal for US intelligence and Susan Rice to want to know who they were talking about and to.
“Part of her job as national security adviser is to pay attention to what foreign governments are doing,” Rebecca Lonergan, a former federal prosecutor who handled foreign surveillance cases, told TPM. “If she’s asking for specific names to be unmasked in order to understand what Russia may be doing to influence the U.S. political system and influence our elections, presumably in a way they thought would benefit them, she’s doing her job.”
So basically the NSA was doing their job and the Susan Rice was doing her job and Devin Nunez miraculously discovered this amazing fact involving non-Russian foreign nationals during the transition — which totally proves that leaks about Russians in communication with Trump officials before the election are all somehow Susan Rice’s fault.
Or rather it doesn’t.
General Michael Haden said Obama didn’t wiretap Trump. So did James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey under oath.
Yes, there were leaks about Trump officials and associates talking to Russian operatives and between Russian banks. Those were not what Devin Nunez was shown. Michael Flynn did talk to Russian Ambassador Kislyak about potentially lifting the sanctions President Obama had imposed on them for their cyber-attacks on the U.S., then he lied about it to both the FBI and Vice President — after which then Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates informed Trump that this happened, Then 3 weeks later they fired Flynn.
That was everyone doing their job, well except for Flynn who is a liar.
Rice admits she did in the course of her job request for unmasking, which everyone says she should have done from time to time, but she doesn’t say she unmasked what Nunez was talking about and even if she did do that, she still nothing wrong since the leaks were about a completely different set of surveillance intercepts.
Rice: There were times when I would receive a report when a “U.S. Person” was referred to, name not reported. And sometimes in that context in order to understand the importance of the report and understand it’s significance it was necessary to find out, or to request the information as to who that U.S. official was. as just a hypothetical example.
The road these guys and rapidly running down doesn’t lead to a crime, because the unmasking their talking about wasn’t revealed to anyone until Devin Nunez went in front of reporters to talk about it.
This is an attempted repeated of their previous smearing of Rice when she told the truth of what the intelligence agencies knew one week after Benghazi.
David Gregory: you talked about this as spontaneous. can you say definitively that the attacks on our consulate in Libya that killed ambassador stevens and others there was spontaneous? was it a planned attack? was there a terrorist element to it?
Rice: let me tell you the best information we have at present. first of all, there's an fbi investigation that's ongoing and we look to that investigation to give us the definitive word as to what transpired. but putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video. what we think then transpired in benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. they came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately, are readily available in post revolutionary Libya. and it escalated into a much more violent episode. obviously, that's our best judgment now.
She never said the you tube video inspired the Benghazi attack, she said it was spontaneous in response to the attack on the Cairo embassy — which was started by a demonstration and protest over the video. Those are two entirely separate motivations and the GOP has been getting this — deliberately — wrong for years now. She simply didn’t say what they claim she said, and they can’t quote her saying that because she just. plain. didn’t.
Days after the attack Ansar al-Sharia took credit — which is why Hillary Clinton said an “al Qeada like group did it” in her email to Chelsea — but then they took it back.
"Ansar al-Sharia brigade did not officially participate as a military body, nor received any orders directed from the brigade."
The group's Twitter feed tells the same story. The account, @anssarelshariea, bears the group's logo and a tweet on September 8 - and then nothing until four days later. And at no point is there a claim of involvement in or responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Consulate compound.
So people including Rice and Clinton, correctly, took note of that. Susan Rice didn’t do or say anything wrong back then, and she didn’t do or say anything wrong now.
All of this is just a distraction from Michael Flynn taking $40,000 from the Kremlin while he still had a security clearance which he didn’t disclose, just as he didn’t disclose being a paid foreign agent for Turkey, then going on to illegally negotiate with the Russian ambassador in contradiction to current U.S. policy over sanctions during the transition — and then LIE ABOUT IT.
If we’re contrasting the integrity of Rice vs Flynn — let’s just say that if Rice does decide to testify as McConnell has requested she won’t need to beg for immunity first.