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According to reports, shortly after Trump won the Republican nomination, Susan Rice pulled intelligence transcripts of conversations between Trump, Trump advisers, and other Americans who were having discussions with foreign leaders or representatives. By law, the US govt. can monitor those conversations, but the identities of the Americans involved must be redacted (”masked”) before the information is promulgated.

The accusation is the Rice “unmasked” the intelligence and spread around the information, especially after Trump was elected. Much of the material had nothing to do with conversations with Russia, so it would not be covered by the FISA warrant that the FBI supposedly obtained to investigate Trump vis a vis Russia.

So what you have is a high Obama official using the national security apparatus to monitor the candidate of the rival party and his transition team (after he won). She then allegedly spread the information she found around with the identities of the Americans in the conversations unmasked, a federal felony.

This is bigger than Watergate...

She ILLEGALLY exposed (aka unmasked) the names of American citizens that were caught up in surveillance of foreign nationals for political purposes. Afterwards these reports were then made available to all of the various agencies as a result of Obama’s executive order allowing for wider sharing of intelligence. This rule change came right before he was to leave office. The leaks in the media began, and Mike Flynn became a victim of such leaks. And because these reports were part of national security, leaking them is a felony in itself.

There is a conspiracy involving Obama, the media and his national security apparatus. The most explosive scandal to come out of Washington, EVER.

When intellegence is collected while monitoring foreign nations, any Americans picked up are supposed to be “masked.” That means their conversation is supposed to kept secret from the public. It’s a felony to release the conversations of American citizens.

Rice is accused of unmasking Americans’ conversation(s) (Flynn and maybe more) which is illegal (a felony). We don’t know for sure if it was her or not right now.

The unmasked conversation(s) were picked up by intelligence while they were monitoring calls with Russia.

But it is also said some Trump conversations did not involve foreign monitoring at all. Agents were said to be just listening into Trump and his team. That would probably be illegal for the agents to do that without a warrant. Chances are they would not get a warrant spying on citizens; whereas they would most likely get a warrant to monitor Russian communications.

Hope that helps. : )

Can someone explain to us simpletons what all this means? What has Rice done that is illegal? I'm really having a hard time understanding what is going on.

I see others on this thread responded to your request with summaries. Here is the detail as I currently understand the situation:

1. We found out relatively recently that the national intelligence apparatus routinely collects every electronic communication by every American and many foreigners. Emails, phones, anything electronic and digital is swept up by their systems and stored in huge databases. (This revelation is terrifying, but is a subject for a different thread.)

2. The vast majority of that data is never reviewed. It just sits in databases. But the feds use one or more systems that mine the data for selected words and phrases, and will flag any communication that contains the selected words/phrases. A flagged communication can be extracted from the database and reviewed by a human analyst. (The legitimate purpose is to reveal criminal and terrorist activity.)

3. If the feds are conducting surveillance of a foreign person, any data about an American citizen who happened to communicate with that foreign person is supposed to be redacted (blacked out) in all transcripts except what is referred to as the raw data. The raw data has limited and usually highly classified uses. The identity and communications of American citizens are supposed to be protected by law unless and until a criminal case is brought against the American. It MOST DEFINITELY is not to be used for political purposes. It's unclear if this is illegal, but it is definitely highly, highly unethical.

4. At some point early last year, possibly at the beginning of the primary season in January 2016, the political types in the Obama administration decided to use the data described above to spy on Republican candidates. It is unclear at this time how far back this spying went and which candidates were targeted. It might not be limited to just the presidential candidates.

5. If you recall, then candidate Trump had been asked what he thought of Putin and he gave a typical Trumpian non-answer response that was vaguely complimentary to Putin. That seemed to plant a seed in some Obama sycophant's mind that maybe Trump could be tied to Russia.

6. When he became the Republican nominee, Susan Rice requested the unredacted intelligence on Trump and people associated with Trump. The purpose was obviously political. She was looking for something to kill Trump's candidacy.

7. When the Wikileaks and other sources made the Clinton and Podesta emails public, Podesta hatched the "Russia hacked the election and Trump colluded with Putin" story to deflect from what his emails contained. After Trump won the election, the Russia lie was pushed extremely hard and the intelligence Susan Rice had collected was disseminated widely throughout the government and media to destroy the Trump presidency before it ever got off the ground. Obama, himself, made the dissemination of the intelligence very easy by changing the rules for what could be disseminated, to whom, and at a lower classification level.

8. Apparently the Obama administration spying on Trump continued almost to the day he was inaugurated.

Intel agencies are authorized to monitor any international communications. However, any US citizens communications intercepted must mask (hide) the identity of the US citizen by law. (exceptions for criminal activity allow for unmasking, but otherwise no).

Obama’s admin, currently believed to be RICE, deliberately unmasked, setup tracking of, and distributed information associated with Trump and his team prior to him even winning the nomination. This is a felony.

Whether the admin decides to drive for prosecution or instead use it as significant leverage waits to be seen.

At least that is how I understand it all.