'MASKS' OFF THE 0 TEAM
Names of Flynn-outers declassified
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified the names of Obama administration officials who were allegedly behind the “unmasking” of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
The move, first reported Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, comes just days after the Justice Department decided to drop the case against Flynn for lying to FBI agents about Russian contacts he had during the Trump presidential transition.
Grenell visited the Justice Department last week and brought the list with him, ABC News reported. Attorney General William Barr must decide whether to release the names publicly.
US citizens sometimes have conversations incidentally picked up through surveillance practices by the intelligence community as it monitors foreign officials.
Those citizens’ identities are supposed to be kept private, or “masked,” absent a warrant to reveal their identity.
US intelligence officials, however, can request the names of those citizens if they think the information is pertinent to understand the intelligence. This process is called “unmasking.”
Since Grenell’s reported visit to
Justice headquarters, Barr said his department had received new information pertaining to Flynn’s case.
Asked by CBS last Thursday about Flynn lying to the FBI, Barr said, “And as I said, the question of lying, you know, it’s something he would know about. On its face, as [former FBI] Director [James]
Comey said, it’s not so clear. But the question of materiality is not something he would know about. That’s something that the government knows about. And we have now gotten into it, drilled down, obtained new information.”
In that same interview, Barr accused FBI officials of setting a “perjury trap” for Flynn, a likely reference to newly released documents that showed how top agency brass prepared for that fateful interview with the newly installed national security adviser in January 2017.
Flynn told FBI agents that he did not discuss reducing US sanctions against Russia during conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. However, the FBI was already aware that this was untrue.
A four-page document released as part of a re-examination of the Flynn case showed the thencounterintelligence director of the FBI openly questioning whether the agency’s “goal” was to “get him to lie.”
Meanwhile, Tuesday, a federal judge ordered a hold on the Justice Department’s move to drop its case against Flynn.
US District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington, DC, issued the order, saying he expects legal experts and other groups will want to argue against the DOJ’s decision.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about the conversations he had with Kislyak.
He later tried to withdraw that plea ahead of sentencing, claiming he did not intentionally lie.