Biden among officials who asked for Flynn to be named
Former Vice President Joe Biden was among Obama administration officials to request the unmasking of Michael Flynn in intelligence reports, according to a recently declassified document.
It could not be confirmed whether Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge President Donald Trump in November, or the other officials saw the information.
The document was declassified this week by Richard Grenell, acting director of National Intelligence.
Grenell provided it Wednesday to the offices of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. The senators then made it public.
In a joint statement, Johnson and Grassley called the records “one step forward in an important effort to get to the bottom of what the Obama administration did during the Russia investigation and to Lt. General Flynn.”
“We are making this public because the American people have a right to know what happened,” they wrote.
Last week, the Justice Department dropped its case against Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about conversations with thenRussian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.
The Biden campaign sharply criticized the release of the document and said it indicated the breadth of concern about Flynn’s activities.
The campaign also excoriated Grenell, Johnson and Grassley.
“These documents have absolutely nothing to do with any FBI investigation and they confirm that all normal procedures were followed — any suggestion otherwise is a flat out lie,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said.
“What’s more, it’s telling that these documents were selectively leaked by Republicans abusing their congressional powers to act as arms of the Trump campaign after having them provided by a partisan official installed for this very purpose.
“The only people with questions to answer are Grenell, Sen. Grassley, and Sen. Johnson for their gross politicization of the intelligence process,” Bates said.
The document includes a “list of recipients who may have received Lt. Gen Flynn’s identity in response to a request processed between” Nov. 8, 2016, and January 2017.
“Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through (the National Security Agency’s) standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request. Only certain personnel are authorized to submit unmasking requests into the NSA system.”
“In this case, 16 authorized individuals requested unmaskings for different NSA intelligence reports for select identified principals. While the principals are identified below, we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information.”
Unmasking is a process of identifying to authorized individuals in the government the name of a U.S. citizen incidentally collected during the intelligence gathering of foreigners.
Biden made the request on Jan. 12, 2017, eight days before leaving office, according to the document.
Others who made such requests included Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, Director for National Intelligence James Clapper, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan.
The requests came during the transition after the election of President Trump while Obama and Biden still held office. It has been widely reported that Obama warned Trump about hiring Flynn two days after the November election. Obama had fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Johnson, head of the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, and Grassley, head of the Finance Committee, requested the material from Grenell and Attorney General William Barr.
The senators said the “officials listed should confirm whether they reviewed this information, why they asked for it and what they did with it, and answer many other questions that have been raised by recent revelations.
“We will continue to review this information and push for additional relevant disclosures until we are satisfied that the American people know the full truth.”
In his statement, Bates said that the Trump administration is trying to distract from its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“These documents simply indicate the breadth and depth of concern across the American government — including among career officials — over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn’s attempts to undermine ongoing American national security policy through discussions with Russian officials or other foreign representatives,” he said. “Importantly, none of these individuals could have known Flynn’s identity beforehand.”