Susan Rice Refuses to Testify Before Congress About Her Role in "Unmasking" Targets of Surveillance, Because She's Just So Darned Innocent

Oh, she'll deny things while not under oath, in a vague way, with no follow-up questions, to very friendly progressive reporters, but there's no damn way in hell she'll put herself in a situation where she has to tell the truth or face legal peril.

She claims she's refusing because the "invitation" was not bipartisan, but one made only by Republicans.

Had she appeared, Rice would have likely faced questions about the so-called "unmasking" of American citizens caught up in conversations with foreign targets of surveillance by the intelligence community. The most prominent figure to be "unmasked" was retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who resigned as Trump's national security adviser in February.

Rice became a central part of the Russia investigation when President Donald Trump said she may have committed a crime when she asked intelligence analysts to disclose the name of a Trump associate mentioned in an intelligence report. Rice has said she did nothing improper.

In a statement of his own, Graham noted Rice's previous denials and said, "I expect we will continue down this path. I hope Ms. Rice will come before the committee – and not just the press."

You know who's never heard of the excuse that someone can refuse to testify if the "invitation" is not fully bipartisan? Liberal Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, that's who.

Todd referenced the letter and asked Feinstein whether she believes Rice should testify and whether she would sign a bipartisan letter inviting Rice to testify.

"Well, I think she ought to consider it," Feinstein said. "She has gone public. I saw her on Fareed [Zakaria]'s show Sunday. I saw her today [on television, semi-answering these questions] and it seems to me that--I guess I've never heard that it has to be a bipartisan letter."

"This is sort of a new criteria, but she is certainly within her rights of saying, ‘I'm now retired. I'm not going to do it,'" Feinstein said.

Feinstein concluded that Rice should go forward and accept the invitation to testify because she has done press interviews recently.

She'll only take questions from "bipartisan" reporters, you know, the ones who play both kinds of music-- both liberal and progressive.

Oh and by the way, Obama dramatically expanded "intelligence" operations against American citizens in his last year in office, and then sent the unredacted, "unmasked" intelligence reports on his political targets all around the government.

During his final year in office, President Obama's team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election....

In all, government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept metadata, which include telephone numbers and email addresses. The activity amounted to a 27.5 percent increase over the prior year and more than triple the 9,500 such searches that occurred in 2013, the first year such data was kept.

The government in 2016 also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a massive spike from the 198 names searched in 2013.

posted by Ace at 05:46 PM

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