President Trump's acting chief of national intelligence has declassified a list of former Obama administration officials said to be in...
President Trump's acting chief of national intelligence has declassified a list of former Obama administration officials said to be involved in the 'unmasking' of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Richard Grenell, the acting Director of National Intelligence, paid a visit to the Justice Department headquarters last week in Washington, DC, and brought a list of former Obama aides with him, ABC News is reporting.
'Unmasking' is the revelation that an American citizen's name appears in intelligence gathering like eavesdropping or wiretaps that are initially aimed at suspected foreign agents.
Supporters of Trump allege that members of the Obama administration improperly sought to investigate Flynn over contacts he had with the ambassador to Russia.
Richard Grenell, President Trump's acting Director of National Intelligence, has declassified a list of Obama administration officials alleged to have been involved in the 'unmasking' of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn
Last week the Department of Justice announced it would be dropping charges against Michael Flynn, President Trump's original national security adviser
It is alleged that Flynn's identity was unveiled during the course of the federal investigation into contacts held between Russian figures and the Trump presidential campaign.
Shortly after Trump took office in January 2017, Flynn was forced to resign after he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian government officials.
Flynn was eventually arrested and pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents investigating alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
In exchange for his guilty plea, Flynn agreed to cooperate with investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was probing interference in the 2016 elections.
Last week, Attorney General William Barr said that the DOJ sought to dismiss all charges against Flynn.
Flynn withdrew his guilty plea and claimed that he was given bad legal representation by his previous lawyers.
On Thursday, the Justice Department asked a judge to drop criminal charges against Flynn amid mounting pressure from the Republican president and his political allies, sparking criticism from Democrats and others who accused Barr of improperly protecting Trump's friends and associates.
It is unclear how the federal judge handling the case will proceed.
Flynn was one of several former Trump aides charged under Mueller's investigation that detailed Moscow's interference in the 2016 US election to boost Trump's candidacy and contacts between Trump's campaign and Russia.
Attorney General William Barr (seen on January 15) announced last week that the Department of Justice would not seek to charge Flynn
Trump's longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone and his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort both were convicted and sentenced to multi-year prison terms.
The Justice Department said in its filing it was no longer persuaded that the FBI's January 24, 2017 Flynn interview that underpinned the charges was conducted with a 'legitimate investigative basis' and did not think his statements were 'material even if untrue.'
'A crime has not been established here. They did not have the basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage,' Barr said in a CBS interview.
Asked about the fact that Flynn lied to investigators, Barr said: 'Well, people sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes.'
In a filing, Flynn's lawyers agreed with the department's motion to dismiss the charges.
A group of nearly 2,000 former DOJ officials signed a petition Monday demanding Barr resign in light of the DOJ decision to drop its case against Flynn saying he's guilty of 'repeated assaults on the rule of law.'
If he won't resign, the officials encouraged Congress to go after Barr.
'If any of us, or anyone reading this statement who is not a friend of the president, were to lie to federal investigators in the course of a properly predicated counterintelligence investigation, and admit we did so under oath, we would be prosecuted for it,' wrote the officials, who said they had served for both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The officials said they were concerned with the Barr-led DOJ's decision to decrease the sentencing for Trump's longtime political adviser Roger Stone and also the recent Flynn decision.
'Make no mistake: The Department's action is extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented,' they wrote.
They said that they continued to believe it would be 'best for the integrity of the Justice Department' for Barr to step aside.
But since there's 'little change' he'd do so, the officials called on Congress to hold the attorney general accountable.
'In the midst of the greatest public health crisis our nation has faced in over a century, we would all prefer it if Congress could focus on the health and prosperity of Americans, not threats to the health of our democracy,' they wrote. 'Yet Attorney General Barr has left Congress with no choice.'
The officials asked members of the House Judiciary Committee to reschedule a planned March 31 hearing in which Barr was supposed to testify.
The Democrats control the House of Representatives and the Judiciary Committee is where the impeachment hearings originated.
'We also call upon Congress to formally censure Attorney General Barr for his repeated assaults on the rule of law in doing the President's personal bidding rather than acting in the public interest,' they wrote. 'Our democracy depends on a Department of Justice that acts as an independent arbiter of equal justice, not as an arm of the president's political apparatus.'
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