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

Your reply makes zero sense. Fox wanted to open a station and they did find out and eventually know about Canadian broadcasting law. Once they knew, they decided not to open the station.

 

Exactly. However I wouldn't even go that far though.

The "report" says next to nothing. "Somebody high up unmasked somebody" ... who cares? Tell me who was harmed, and by whom. Tell me what was in the communication. Tell me if it was legal and approved by a federal judge. Etc etc.

Typical FoxNews outrage over speculation without any proof. At least the Russian speculation on Trump has a world of circumstantial evidence and the person in question (Trump) stands to do a ton of damage to our country if he hasn't already if found guilty of collusion.

The FoxNews outrage machine is trying to get their followers outraged in what exactly? Obama... Clinton?? They are both gone and pose no thread to the Right wing of the country. The Right only operates as opposition. They have no idea how to actually deal with responsibility of owning up to their own mess.

It's only opposition and outrage that they know and crave like a drug. I've never been obsessed with anything like FoxNews and their followers are obsessed with Obama and Clinton. Hopefully the Left doesn't fall into the same trap with Trump where they can't handle not being a victim and blame Trump years after he's gone.

 

I find the gross overuse of any tense of the word "unmask" to be the most disturbing thing about this thread.

 

So Nunes is working with Trump to cover-up collaboration with Russia and Faux News is talking about taking masks off as the main story.

Happy Haymitch?

 

Agreed.
This vague...implied crap is getting old.
Say it plane and name names

Rocket River

 

^^

Spoiler

 

Bloomberg claiming Susan Rice was the one who unmasked.

 

Now we're getting somewhere. From the article, we know it was Susan Rice as National Security Advisor. We know it was after the election but before the transition. The content was supposedly about the Trump transition and the foreign policy positions of the Trump team. And the article speculates that it was not illegal. Susan Rice appears to have lied a month ago about her involvement.

I'd still like to know what was the rationale for the unmasking. If it was legal, was it ethical? And, what did the National Security Council do with the information, aside from pass it around the intelligence community to make Trump look bad? (And, if the content was about the transition and about policy, how does that make Trump look bad?) On the flip side, I want to know do the reports reflect illegal or unethical behavior among the Trump team. So many questions, but our civil servants of course will do their best to make sure I don't get answers.

 

from the story:
"Rice's requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials does not vindicate Trump's own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There remains no evidence to support that claim. "
"The ranking Democrat on the committee Nunes chairs, Representative Adam Schiff, viewed these reports on Friday. In comments to the press over the weekend he declined to discuss the contents of these reports, but also said it was highly unusual for the reports to be shown only to Nunes and not himself and other members of the committee."

 

I don't exactly disagree, but this sounds like legalism. Obviously, Trump was directly surveilled, but his activities were being followed by eavesdropping on the conversations of foreign officials and unmasking the names of Trump associates in those reports. Looks like intelligence agencies and the NSC found a circumvention of the warrant process so that they could learn more about Trump's activities. If they had good reason to do so -- like they had good reason to think he was coordinating with Russia to undermine the election -- then I have no problem with it. If it was actually just partisan dirty tricks, I do have a problem with it (but I'm hard pressed to think of a scenario in which a cabal of rational people would spy on the incoming president for no discernible effect). But I'm getting about as cynical about the lack of vindication of Trump's claims as I am about Trump's claim itself. No, he wasn't bugged; yes, he was spied on. The operative question is why.

 

Nunes has zero credibility.

He is a mouth piece for the Trump administration and frankly he has compromised the integrity of the House investigation.

Nunes was a member of the Trump transition team.

Nunes went to the White House, to view "documents", breaching protocol.

Nunes, it is learned, got the information directly from the White House.

After viewing the documents presented by the Trump team, he did not tell the house members on the investigation what he saw, he instead gave a press conference discussing "incidental interception" and made vague statements and offered nothing concrete.

He then, after the press conference (with the house investigation members still in the dark) went and met with Trump.

Nunes then states he will never tell his fellow members in the investigation where he got the materials from.

Then the head of the FBI, (a Republican) states under oath that he is concerned that Nunes is looking for anything to possibly support the claims of Trump and not the actual investigation into Russia.

Finally Schiff views the information, and requests that all members on both isles get to see all the information.


Nunes is toast, and he has ruined the integrity of the investigation by the House. Luckily there are two other investigations going as well.

 

I agree if it was dirty politics but was any of it actionable? If I'm following correctly, the unmasking took place after the election and before the inauguration. I guess we will find out how this harmed anyone. That's the question you and I and others have been asking--who was harmed and how?

 

Exactly. It's also shameful that Ryan hasn't removed him as head of the committee yet.

 

I think what it comes down to is something that was extremely unethical but not necessarily illegal. If we can remember long enough ago back to the IRS scandal, it's not exactly the first time that Obama administration members have used their power to target political adversaries so it's pretty in character for Obama administration people to do things like this.

 

In the information vacuum they've created, I can only make assumptions. If the goal and the effect of the unmasking was to embarrass the Trump team, I would think the revelations would be stuff like the relationships and meetings people like Manafort, Page, Sessions, Flynn, and Kuschner have had with Russian officials and banks which have been since leaked from the intel community. That's been embarrassing and damaging for Trump. But they still haven't managed to explain why they had these meetings, why they were all supposedly so unimportant, and why they had to lie about them. That seems to shift the motivation for the unmasking away from embarrassing Trump toward exposing unethical or illegal activities of Trump.

 

Right, but how were they harmed or targeted? Their names weren't leaked to the press and it took place after the election, not like it was intelligence given to the DNC or the HRC campaign. I guess we have to wait and see...

 

It's a situation where the information was widely circulated with the hope that it would be leaked. Again, not necessarily illegal, just extremely unethical. The reason the names almost always remain masked is to prevent exactly this kind of situation.

As to a reason why this was done, it was done to harm the Trump administration and to try and poison the well for them. The goal is to try and take back congress in 2 years (still unlikely) and to take back the presidency in 4 years. By getting stuff like this leaked, it's a huge PR issue which is what they were hoping for. It was basically one of the last things they were going to be able to do to harm the incoming Trump administration while they still had the power to really do so and they jumped on it.

It's basically worked like a charm, it instantly put the Trump administration on the defensive and served as a distraction away from any legislation the Trump administration wanted to push for early and on top of that it gave Democrats in congress an excuse for the obstructionism that they were planning on all along.

Just dirty politics as usual, not that I really mind though because just like with the DNC emails when the "dirty tricks" are doing nothing but exposing the truth I don't have a problem with it.

 

NYT had the story on Susan Rice for 2 days?

may be a good reason not to run story like checking facts, but i doubt it.

 

How would 2 days protect his reputation?

 

they could sit on it longer. for all i know, they were never going to run it. It was just 2 days until someone else revealed it.