Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to scrutinize episodes of the intelligence practice known as “unmasking” that took place “before and after” the 2016 election
last year with probing the origins of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign — “had been looking at the issue of unmasking” as part of his review.“The attorney general determined that certain aspects of unmasking needed to be reviewed separately as a support to John Durham’s investigation,” Kupec said, “so he tapped John Bash, one of our U.S. attorneys out of Texas, to do just that.
Bash’s new investigative role with the Justice Department comes as the president and congressional Republicans have escalated their attacks on former senior officials within President Barack Obama’s administration who might have been involved in efforts thatBash will be “looking specifically at episodes both before and after the election,” Kupec said.
Trump has claimed those Obama officials were complicit in a vast government conspiracy, which he has dubbed “Obamagate,” to target Flynn and wound his incoming administration during the presidential transition period before he assumed office. But the White House and its conservative allies have struggled to provide any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the previous administration. Former U.S.
Requests by national security officials to reveal the identity of individuals involved in conversations subject to government surveillance are common. For example, last year alone, U.S. spy agencies were asked 7,724 times to reveal the identities of Americans mentioned in those intelligence intercepts.
“Obviously, we know that unmasking inherently isn’t wrong, but certainly the frequency, the motivation and the reasoning behind unmasking can be problematic,” Kupec said Wednesday. “And when you’re looking at unmasking as part of a broader investigation like John Durham’s investigation, looking specifically at who was unmasking whom can add a lot to our understanding about motivation and big-picture events.
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