UPDATE: During an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Tuesday, Rice wouldn't say whether she'd be willing to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee about her alleged role in unmasking Trump campaign officials.
Susan Rice won't say whether she's willing to testify to Congress under oath, even if she receives a subpoena
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) April 4, 2017
***Original Post***
Yesterday Bloomberg's Eli Lake dropped a bombshell story alleging former White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice is responsible for the unmasking of Americans working on the Trump transition team.
White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."
Fox News and Wall Street Journal sources also pinned Rice as the culprit, prompting increased attention on the issue from Capitol Hill. Texas Senator John Cornyn is calling for Rice to testify under oath.
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She needs to testify under oath: Susan Rice Unmasked https://t.co/SHe985iszO via @WSJOpinion
— JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) April 4, 2017
In a recent interview with PBS, Rice claimed to have no knowledge of unmasking. A spokesperson close to her told CNN Monday night she did nothing wrong in her capacity as national security advisor.
Last week the Senate Intelligence Committee officially launched an extensive investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election through a propaganda campaign and will surely cover unmasking of American citizens at some point in their process.
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