GOP senators hit the gas on Obama-era probes

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The Hill

Senate Republicans are ramping up their investigations into the Obama era as President Trump readies himself for a battle this fall against the former administration’s vice president, Joe Biden.

Fueled by watchdog reports on a shadowy surveillance court and the Justice Department’s decision to drop its case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Republicans are targeting Obama officials for further scrutiny and questioning.

Key GOP senators are using their committee gavels to dig into some of the biggest concerns of  Trump and his allies, including Biden’s work for Busima Holdings, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court and the handling of the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election meddling. 

The controversial probes have drawn fierce backlash from Democrats, who believe Republicans are either giving credence to conspiracy theories, unintentionally spreading Russian information or trying to interfere in the 2020 election. But after being thrown into limbo amid a protracted recess sparked by the coronavirus, Republicans say they are ready to hit the gas. 

“If we weren’t in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis this would be the worst scandal since Watergate,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). 

Call for investigations escalated on Wednesday after acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell sent Congress a list of dozens of Obama administration officials who they say asked for documents that led to the identity of Flynn being “unmasked” from intelligence reports between the 2016 election and President Trump’s inauguration.

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Obamagate Smashes Media Myth Of A ‘Scandal-Free’ Administration

Despite its many policy failures and foreign affairs disasters, the Obama administration always escaped serious criticism in the media because, we were told, there were no serious scandals during his two terms in office. As just-released documents show, President Barack Obama himself was neck-deep in the silent coup attempt by top U.S. officials at the FBI, Justice Department and CIA.

Another media myth, generated by left-leaning journalists to prop up their favorite politician, bites the dust. How do we know? #ObamaGate is now trending on Twitter, a sure sign of spreading interest in the scandal.

The latest document dump from the trove of secrets that the DOJ and FBI withheld from the public shows that the plot to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency by entrapping his National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn went all the way to the top.

Among the documents is one from the Mueller investigation regarding alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russian officials.

In it, according to the Washington Examiner, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates “told special counsel Robert Mueller’s team (in August of 2017) that she first learned the FBI possessed and was investigating recordings of Flynn’s late 2016 conversations with a Russian envoy following a Jan. 5, 2017, national security meeting at the White House. It wasn’t Comey who told her, but former President Barack Obama.

 

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Uncovering Obama's Surveillance of His Political Opponents

The presumptive Democratic candidate for President Joe Biden heads a list of more than a dozen Obama officials who spied on Donald Trump’s ex-national security advisor Michael Flynn.

Others senior officials include Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and UN ambassador Samantha Power.

A list declassified Tuesday by Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grennel shows that Biden and others asked to have Flynn’s name “unmasked” in transcripts of US intelligence intercepts of foreign officials. The names of US persons or entities incidentally collected by such intercepts are minimized to protect the privacy rights of Americans. Unmasking identities is not in itself not illegal, nor even necessarily improper. Occasionally US policymakers will ask to unmask a US person to better understand the nature of the intelligence before them. Obama officials, however, gorged themselves like children at a candy store.

In an almost two-month period starting election day November 8, 2016, senior US officials made 49 requests to unmask the retired three-star general.