Intelligence chief declassifies Russia probe names
The United State’s intelligence chief has declassified an Obama-era document related to President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in a highly unusual move that prompted accusations that he was trying to discredit the Justice Department’s Trump-Russia investigation.
Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, declassified the document — a list of Obama administration officials who sought to learn the identities of Trump associates swept up in surveillance of foreign officials — and gave it to the Justice Department, officials said. The department does not intend to release it, a senior department official said, and Grenell’s office declined to a provide a copy. But Republican lawmakers could demand that
Grenell’s office release the list.
Grenell’s move came as Trump and his associates have in recent days intensified their efforts to change public perception about the Russia inquiry from a scandal involving Trump to one involving his predecessor. They argue that the Obama White House, the FBI and the news media acted improperly as they sought to learn more about Flynn’s ties to Moscow.
“It is part of the struggle over who controls the narrative of the investigation of the 2016 election,” said Steven Aftergood, an expert on government classification at the Federation of American Scientists.
“It is putting the spotlight on the investigators rather than the investigated.
“It is saying what is irregular here is not the extraordinary contacts with the Russian government but the attempt to understand them.”
The information Grenell declassified could help a Justice Department prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the Russia inquiry. The prosecutor, John Durham, has examined the initial leak of information to a Washington Post columnist about phone calls in late 2016 between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, officials have said. Durham could use the names on Grenell’s list to identify officials who would have had access to the sensitive details about those discussions.
The declassification could also allow Trump administration officials to leak the names on the list without violating laws against disclosing classified information, the very issue that Durham is investigating.
Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about the conversations in a case the Justice Department abruptly moved to drop last week, prompting accusations of politicisation from former law enforcement officials.— New York Times