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" It’s been a day since Bloomberg’s Eli Lake reported allegations that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice asked to “unmask” the identities of certain Trump transition officials captured in intelligence reports, and the right is calling for her head. This is the story that was leaked by White House officials to House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes, you’ll recall. The unmasked Trump people weren’t intelligence targets themselves, but were talking to foreign officials who were. In Lake’s telling, it was Rice who allegedly asked intelligence agency leaders to reveal the names of Trump officials, which are normally “masked” to protect US citizens caught in foreign intelligence gathering. Senator Rand Paul claimed Lake had identified the “smoking gun” that validated Donald Trump’s claims that the Obama administration was “spying on” him.
Of course, it was no such thing; even Lake reported that what Rice was alleged to do was neither a crime nor evidence of Trump’s ludicrous claim. Security officials went further: former CIA director John McLaughlin told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that Rice was just “doing her job.”
But this isn’t the first time Paul has gone after Rice. She was the designated fall gal in Part One of the GOP’s Benghazi freakout, after she went on the Sunday shows shortly following the 2012 attack and, using a series of talking points developed by the CIA in collaboration with the State Department, shared information that later turned out to be untrue, particularly that the attack was “spontaneous.” Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham led the attack on Rice, and the controversy ultimately blocked her from succeeding Clinton as Secretary of State. But in 2013, when Obama made her his National Security Advisor—a job that did not require Senate approval—Rand Paul tweeted: “I really question the President’s judgment in promoting someone who was complicit in misleading the American public on the Benghazi attacks.”
So Republicans now have their favorite scapegoat back in the stocks. On Tuesday, Senator Lindsay Graham accused her of previously leaking classified information: “She’s done it in the past, and whether or not she’s done it this time I don’t know, but it’s certainly something Congress should look into.” Senator Tom Cotton called Rice the “Typhoid Mary of the Obama administration,” a revoltingly sexist slur that also referred back to her role in the Benghazi investigation.
Almost unbelievably (but not quite), Donald Trump Jr. gave credit for the scoop not to Eli Lake, but to the right-wing hitman Mike Cernovich, white supremacist, rape denier and Pizzagate conspirator who first reported on Rice’s alleged involvement. "
Read more here: https://www.thenation.com/article/susan-rice-did-her-job-and-boy-are-republicans-pissed/
Of course, it was no such thing; even Lake reported that what Rice was alleged to do was neither a crime nor evidence of Trump’s ludicrous claim. Security officials went further: former CIA director John McLaughlin told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that Rice was just “doing her job.”
But this isn’t the first time Paul has gone after Rice. She was the designated fall gal in Part One of the GOP’s Benghazi freakout, after she went on the Sunday shows shortly following the 2012 attack and, using a series of talking points developed by the CIA in collaboration with the State Department, shared information that later turned out to be untrue, particularly that the attack was “spontaneous.” Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham led the attack on Rice, and the controversy ultimately blocked her from succeeding Clinton as Secretary of State. But in 2013, when Obama made her his National Security Advisor—a job that did not require Senate approval—Rand Paul tweeted: “I really question the President’s judgment in promoting someone who was complicit in misleading the American public on the Benghazi attacks.”
So Republicans now have their favorite scapegoat back in the stocks. On Tuesday, Senator Lindsay Graham accused her of previously leaking classified information: “She’s done it in the past, and whether or not she’s done it this time I don’t know, but it’s certainly something Congress should look into.” Senator Tom Cotton called Rice the “Typhoid Mary of the Obama administration,” a revoltingly sexist slur that also referred back to her role in the Benghazi investigation.
Almost unbelievably (but not quite), Donald Trump Jr. gave credit for the scoop not to Eli Lake, but to the right-wing hitman Mike Cernovich, white supremacist, rape denier and Pizzagate conspirator who first reported on Rice’s alleged involvement. "
Read more here: https://www.thenation.com/article/susan-rice-did-her-job-and-boy-are-republicans-pissed/