Obama’s Treasury Department Spied on Trump Associates

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

May 18, 2020

When Acting DNI Richard Grenell released the list of individuals who made unmasking requests relating to General Michael Flynn, one of the curious facts that stood out was the presence of a number of Obama Treasury Department officials on the list. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and no fewer than five of his subordinates–Deputy Secretary, Under Secretary, Acting Assistant Secretary, and so on, all political appointees in the Obama administration–all made unmasking requests with regard to conversations that turned out to involve General Flynn, on the same day: December 14, 2016. Lew made a second request on January 12, 2017.

The mystery of why President Obama’s Treasury Department was interested in electronic surveillance carried out for national security purposes may have been solved by this scoop in the Ohio Star: “The Treasury Department Spied on Flynn, Manafort, and the Trump Family, Says Whistleblower.”

(Snip)

The Treasury Department presumably was interested in financial records of Trump associates, as opposed to national security matters, and the whistleblower who talked to the Star explained:

Quote

This surveillance program was run out of Treasury’s Office of Intelligence Analysis, which was then under the leadership of S. Leslie Ireland. Ireland came to OIA in 2010 after a long tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency and a one-year stint as Obama’s daily in-person intelligence briefer.

The whistleblower said Treasury should never have been part of the unmasking of Flynn, because its surveillance operation was off-the-books. That is to say, the Justice Department never gave the required approval to the Treasury program, and so there were no guidelines, approvals nor reports that would be associated with a DOJ-sanctioned domestic surveillance operation.
***
Patrick Conlon, the OIA director, who succeeded Ireland, was on the list of 37 Obama administration officials who either requested that Flynn’s name be unmasked or were shown the unmasked surveillance product.

Conlon accessed the Flynn file Dec. 14, 2016.

There must have been some kind of meeting that day. These are all of the other Treasury Department officials looking at Flynn that day: Secretary Jacob Lew, Acting Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis A. Daniel “Danny” McGlynn, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Michael Neufeld, Deputy Secretary Sarah Raskin, Under Secretary Nathan Sheets and Acting Under Secretary Adam Szubin.

(Snip)