Posted on 05/20/2020 2:26:23 PM PDT by janetjanet998
Breaking via WaPo: Michael Flynn's name was never 'masked' in the FBI document on his communications with Russian ambassador.
"When the FBI circulated [the report], they included Flynn's name from the beginning," said a former senior U.S. official.
It is a guess by Dan Bongino.
“There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.”
So what was the document declassified and released last week with the list of names of the people who requested said unmasking?
So what was the document declassified and released last week with the list of names of the people who requested said unmasking?
Um, yes he would, or should, have been masked. Even incidental collection on an American citizen is not permitted. No matter what agency does it.
As soon as you realize one part to the conversation is American the collection stops. Period. End of story.
You want to get more then get a warrant.
You can dig it out of here
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/1118/CLEANEDFinal%20USSID%20SP0018.pdf
Then why ask to unmask it? I must admit I’ve wondered why in any event. Anyone who read the transcript would know who it was without asking. The more interesting question is why were so many people even reading this? Very few of these people should have been in the loop. My suspicion is that the guy who was actually responsible for unmasking (likely Brennan) may have wanted all these other people to also request unmasking because he did not want to take the fall if it blew up in his face. If all these other people signEd on then it is doubtful the prosecutor would indict them all.
Another reason they had a lot of people ask for unmasking was that they knew they were going to leak and they wanted it make it as difficult as possible to determine who actually caused the leak.
If you place a call on your mobile phone while you’re in a foreign country — especially a third world sh!t-hole like the Dominican Republic — there are probably dozens of shady characters who have access to your conversation before the CIA/FBI does.
If/when that's confirmed--and there were likely many other such orders from Barry for surreptitious and falsely-claimed (i.e., political opposition) "national security" surveillance--the DOJ will be calling multiple grand juries for Barry!
That’s my take too. He wasn’t ‘caught up’ in unmasking. He was the starting point, they were spying on him when he made a call to a Russian.
If true, all the evidence in General Flynn’s case should be thrown out as the fruit a a poisonous tree.
And such a conversation would still be classified. If disseminated within the US government without classification and unmasked and no warrant against Flynn, it would be illegal.
Open source does not mean unclassified.
I’m certainly not an expert on this so if somebody with more experience wishes to chime in I’m all for it.
Did the FBI use the NSA Intelligence Surveillance system to listen to Flynn?
Just because you are the FBI and you can listen Kislyak as part of counter-intelligence, that doesn’t mean you can then use that information in a criminal case against a US Citizen.
You may remember, Obama that day or that week, riled the russkies with sanctions (and deportations, iirc) knowing that Kislyak would burn the lines to talk to the incoming Flynn.
CIA was monitoring Kislyak’s calls and that’s how the FBI set the Flynn trap. They knew exactly what he said to Kislyak and went to the WH the next day to try to get him to deny, lie, or distor his call with Kislyak. They caught him in a mis-remembered irrelevant detail and used it to advise Pence that they’d caught him lying to the FBI.
No need to unmask Flynn, at least at that point in time.
If Obama himself approved this, it will be the beginning of a lot more questions.
FBI taps all the embassies and consulates. Just as other countries do.
Doesn’t matter. If Joe Smith from Maryland calls Putin and offers to do his carpets for $10, the FBI can’t turn around and start reporting on Joe Smith Carpets within the US Intel agencies without a warrant.
IT IS ILLEGAL!
Obie’s main goal was to smear Flynn and remove him from the administration....he likely would have known where to look to expose the coup.
Let me rephrase that:
If Joe Smith's Carpets contacts Putin and offers to do his carpets for $10, the FBI CANNOT use Signal Intelligence to start reporting on Joe Smith's Carpets without a warrant.
My crackpot theory is that there was a FISA warrant on Flynn long before the Dec ‘16 call to the Rooskie.
And either Contreras or Sullivan signed the warrant (remember Judge Contreras - the Stroker’s pal, who got replaced on the Flynn trial.)
I was once in a discussion where a guy from my organization had pasted a definition from a college textbook onto a slide and while it was on screen another guy said 'that's classified!' I objected, said it's public domain knowledge that I and thousands of other engineers learned in college. I was told it was classified in the '50s and never declassified so it's still classified. They couldn't wipe it out of textbooks but they could force us to wipe our computer hard drives for having that well known definition on them. And they did. That sucked.
So yeah, classified isn't about how you got it or even if it's already public, it's about what the content is.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.