Fox News A. Housley: Surveillance led to unmasking b4 Trump was GOP nominee

I'm operating just off of what we know or what we think we know. If Nunes was telling the truth that "this has nothing to do with Russia" and names were unmaked anyway, which we believe to be the case, it's pretty hard to make a case that it would be vital to national security or to a criminal investigation and typically those are the only reasons why you would unmask someone like that. Again, going on what we think we know, if there was unmasking done not related to either of those 2 reasons then the most likely scenario is that it was done to circulate those names and get them to leak for political reasons. Given the history of the Obama administration and the types of things Obama administration have done in the IRS and other areas, it's not out of character for them to abuse their power for political purposes so it wouldn't be shocking for that to be the case yet again.

 

It's already been explained and linked that it isn't unusual to unmask non-targeted individuals. It explains why in this case it especially made sense why they would need to unmask the non-targeted individuals.

 

I just told you the 2 reasons why you unmask a non-targeted name, which of those 2 are you saying was the reason? National security or criminal investigation? If you pick national security, on what grounds? If it "had nothing to do with Russia" like we've been told, how do you tie it to national security?

 

If you are investigating foreigners and they are discussing politics with people who aren't the target, it would be normal to unmask the people to provide the context of those that are being surveilled.

 

Was that the excuse given? If that was true, a LOT more unmasking would be done than is commonly done. Basically ANYONE talking politics would get unmasked, and that's just not the case.

If that was the excuse given, fine, it works as an excuse probably, but you'd have to be a sucker to believe it.

 

There was an article that was linked. This is from the article.
https://gma.yahoo.com/now-better-idea-whos-behind-184228439.html

 

So they are saying it's not unusual "if" certain things happened, but we don't have any evidence of it. They could have easily said that it is unusual "unless" X and it would have been the same statement. Also, are we to believe that every single report was about "valuable political information"? I mean, we're not just talking about only one intelligence report where someone was unmasked here. I mean, it's solid spin, but I think the reality is that it was done for politics and they are now spinning it to make it look better than it otherwise would now that Rice's name has gotten out there as the person who did it.

 

This is a very astute analogy...

 

Trump was not spied on. His team was caught up in legal surveillance of another party. The intelligence reports that were generated from that surveillance were circulated with unmasked names. Whether this was legal or not, I don't know and I do see how it can be considered questionable.

Trumps original tweets did not mention anything about unmasking of names. He flat out accused Obama of spying on him which was not the case.

 

I said they were caught up in surveillance of another party. His team was not the target of the investigation. The other party was being investigated and Trumps people were in contact with them. They were not the target of the investigation. Trump's tweets come across like they were actively targeting Trump's people which was not the case.

I also never mentioned the Russians.

 

It's almost as if you people have never watched The Wire.

Let's say Lester Freamon currently has a wiretap authorization on Cheese's phone. A court permits Lester to listen to Cheese's conversations with the hope of building a drug case against him because Cheese is a known dealer and lieutenant in the east side crew. One day, while listening to Cheese's communications, Lester recognizes the voice of gang leader Proposition Joe on the other end of the line. They're clearly talking about an order of uncut dope from The Greek coming through the docks that week.

Lester can't believe his good fortune and informs his superiors. Even though neither Prop Joe or The Greek were targets named in the wiretap authorization, their incidental contact with Cheese is what incriminates them in a larger conspiracy. While not originally named in the court order, Lester felt it was necessary to inform his superiors of Prop Joe and The Greek's presence in the investigation. Thus, they have been "unmasked" and the investigation widens.

The entire series is available on HBO Now and Amazon Prime in case you'd like to learn some things and watch the best show ever made.

 

So the FBI is part of the "leftist media conglomerate"? I could take you more seriously if you actually acknowledged that there are some pretty strange circumstances surrounding Trump and Russia but didn't believe that there was truly anything damning there. After all, it just seems unnecessary (and stupid) for him to actively collude with Russia and I have a hard time believing that even Trump is anywhere close to being dumb enough to make a decision like that. But on the contrary, there are some really odd red flags out there including multiple people within the campaign (like Flynn) talking to Russian officials and trying to hide it.

Instead, you've chosen the Trump-like tactic of claiming everyone in the world is out to get him and anything that comes out that looks bad for him is fake news while eating up anything and everything that confirms your already-held biases.

 

How would Susan Rice know who "American #1" was, etc? And it was important to know both parties in the interactions in order to fully understand the importance of the interactions. And... unmasked identities and the interactions was not "spread through the government so that members of the media could use it to publish a story, etc".

 

But Bobby.... Go watch the Nunes press conferences again. He states that there was unmasking and then says that well its not necessarily unmasked but he could tell who was being referred to in the documents. To say he's confusing is an understatement. Then we don't actually get the documents (which are classified) to verify what the hell he's talking about, whose actually unmasked, whether its a fact that they were in fact unmasked or just easily identified, who they were talking to, and what they were talking about.

I mean can we at least agree on the notion that this isn't CLEAR please, and people are operating on speculation for a large part here? Your phrasing here for "what we think" and "most likely" doesn't speak to clear facts that we know in the case.


*(with the Russia/Trump scandal I agree there is quite a bit of connecting the dots and speculation, but at least with the topics at hand, we have clear defined events that are documented with the people that are involved, and what activities were involved in their activities. Its unfair here to slap anyones hands in the Russia scandal and then turn around on something like this using language like "What we THINK we know", and "Most likely". Either we have verified facts or we don't)

 

There was an article that was linked. This is from the article.

Again, it isn't unusual or illegal to unmask the names. It especially makes sense to get a context of what people are discussing the political matters that people in a campaign might be discussing. Without the names being unmasked it could be any number of people.

For instance the people discussing political issues from the Trump campaign could be Donald Trump, Michael Flynn, Kushner, etc. You wouldn't want to attribute something to Donald Trump that was actually said by Flynn. It makes sense.

 

Trump said that it was A. ordered by Obama and elaborated on that calling Obama a bad/sick guy. That would be a crime. He said it was on the level of Watergate. That would also be a crime.

If he said that he believed that members of his team were under surveillance that would be different. That is what people are trying to rewrite Trump's as meaning, but that isn't what they said nor is it why they attracted media attention.

I'll be all behind protecting the civil liberties of any Americans that had them infringed. I have seen no evidence of that thus far.