Mexico Comes Demanding Documents of Fast and Furious, Now?

Posted on May 16, 2020May 16, 2020 by Denise Simon

MEXICO CITY, May 11 (Reuters) – Mexico’s foreign minister on Monday posted a video online detailing a diplomatic note to the U.S. embassy requesting answers about a gun-running sting under the Obama presidency, keeping a spotlight on the controversial issue.

In the video, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard cited former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as saying Mexican authorities knew about the 2009-2011 scheme known as ‘Fast and Furious.’

Representatives for Holder did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Nor did the U.S. embassy in Mexico City.

It was the first time Ebrard or President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had made direct reference by name to a key U.S. figure connected to the program since the issue resurfaced in Mexico a week ago.

In a bid to curb cross-border gun smuggling, the U.S. scheme allowed people to illegally buy arms in the United States and take them to Mexico so that the weapons could be tracked and lead law enforcement officials to crime bosses. Some of those guns were subsequently blamed for the fatal shootings of both Mexican and U.S. citizens.

The current Mexican government has zeroed in on the program to highlight possible corruption under previous Mexican administrations amid a debate over how much they knew about the U.S. operation.

Holder, who served as U.S. Attorney General under Barack Obama between 2009 and 2015, had previously issued a statement via the U.S. embassy in Mexico contending that “Mexican authorities” knew about the program, Ebrard said.

“The (Mexican) government requests that it be provided with all the information available regarding the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation,” Ebrard said in the video posted on Twitter.

Lopez Obrador first brought up the gun-running program last Monday when answering questions about Genaro Garcia Luna, a former Mexican security minister who was arrested in the United States in December on drug trafficking offenses.

Garcia Luna served under former President Felipe Calderon from 2006-12, spearheading a crackdown on drug cartels. Lopez Obrador has used his arrest to argue that corruption was rampant in past Mexican governments.

Some critics of Lopez Obrador contend that he has done U.S. President Donald Trump a favor by raising questions about Garcia Luna as the U.S president prepares to fight a November election against Joe Biden, who was vice president from 2009 to 2017 under Obama.

Lopez Obrador’s supporters say he has focused on the issue to illustrate hypocrisy among his domestic adversaries.

Calderon, a longstanding political rival of Lopez Obrador, said last week there was no agreement between Mexico and the United States to permit illicit entry of arms.

‘Fast and Furious’ followed earlier sting operations that began under Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. (Reporting by Drazen Jorgic and Sharay Angulo; Editing by Dave Graham and Jane Wardell)

**** Judge rules DOJ must share documents from Fast and Furious ... photo

Americans paying attention to the unresolved Obama era scandals would like to know all the truth too. So as a refresher, here is the last status of the investigation.

May, 2016:

JS: Last week, Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued an important opinion in Oversight Committee v. Lynch, the subpoena enforcement litigation related to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s investigation into Operation Fast and Furious. Media outlets generally reported it as a win for Congress and loss for the Executive. In an acute sense, that is true — Judge Jackson ordered the Justice Department to produce sensitive materials that reflect deliberations about how to respond to congressional requests and media inquiries. However, the opinion is a much more complicated ruling that reinforces some longstanding executive branch legal arguments that Congress has perennially disputed. In the longer term, this opinion may actually be a win for the executive branch, despite being ordered to hand over documents the President designated as privileged.

Background

The case arose from DOJ’s refusal to turn over to Congress a number of disputed documents pursuant to President Obama’s formal assertion of executive privilege. The underlying congressional investigation sought information related to failed gun trafficking investigations led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) that came to be collectively referred to as Operation Fast and Furious. Starting during the fall of 2009, ATF agents in Arizona began setting up a series of sting operations targeting gunrunners who were moving large quantities of firearms across the Mexico border. But, inadequate surveillance, technology failures, and poor judgment led ATF to allow many of the guns it was using in the stings to “walk.” A number of those lost weapons ended up in the hands of drug cartels and showed up at various crime scenes on both sides of the US-Mexico border, including at the scene of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010. Just last week, within days of Judge Jackson’s opinion, news outlets reported that one of the guns at issue in Operation Fast and Furious was found at El Chapo’s hideout.

However, the document dispute has very little to do with the allegations about ATF’s problematic investigative tactics. With the exception of a few documents related to wiretaps, grand jury materials, and confidential information in open investigative files, Congress received almost all of the underlying documents related to Operation Fast and Furious.

Instead, the most significant dispute in the case relates to Congress’s allegation that DOJ officials lied to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in February 2011. Congress then aggressively sought all documents related to the Department’s communications and deliberations about how to respond to the congressional investigation and media inquiries, for before and long after the alleged misrepresentation to Grassley. The administration eventually accommodated the Committee by providing access to all the documents that had led to providing Grassley inaccurate information. Those documents demonstrated good faith but a lack of diligence by responsible officials in both Phoenix and Washington, DC. However, Congress forged ahead with a sprawling meta-investigation that raised significant institutional concerns within the Executive about the collapse of “separation” in the separation of powers. (At that time, I was Associate Counsel to the President and was involved in White House negotiations with the Oversight Committee over various congressional requests related to Operation Fast and Furious.) The document stalemate served as the primary basis for a House vote of contempt of Congress against then-Attorney General Eric Holder in June 2012. That same month, the House authorized this civil enforcement lawsuit.

Short-Term Loss for the Executive

At the top line, last week Judge Jackson ordered DOJ to produce all the documents it had designated as protected by the deliberative process privilege. In the absence of an appellate reversal, the Oversight Committee will obtain its prize: some 5,342 unique documents reflecting executive branch deliberations about how to respond to a hostile congressional committee and how to respond to media requests. To be sure, the Committee will seek to make hay of those deliberations and any impolitic remarks they contain.

DOJ had argued the production of documents revealing deliberations about how to respond to Congress would chill fulsome responses to Congress. The court quotes DOJ’s longstanding position that disclosure “would inhibit the candor of such Executive Branch deliberations in the future and significantly impair the Executive Branch’s ability to respond independently and effectively to congressional oversight.” I have previously argued that branch independence is critical in response to oversight requests.

Judge Jackson’s order relies on her holding that Congress’s oversight need outweighs DOJ’s confidentiality interest on the facts in this record. Specifically, she suggests the need for deliberations to be confidential was substantially weakened by prior subject matter disclosures by the public report of DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). She finds “whatever incremental harm that could flow from providing the Committee with the records that have already been publicly disclosed is outweighed by the unchallenged need for the material.”

Ironically, DOJ has long relied on the OIG report to bolster its argument that Congress could obtain the information elsewhere, which is one of the factors to be considered in the leading DC Circuit opinion on privilege, In re Sealed Case (Espy).

The court’s analysis seems to suggest that an executive branch entity must challenge the legitimacy of Congress’s investigative interests at the categorical subject-matter level rather than at the incremental request level. By characterizing Congress’s interest as an “unchallenged need,” Judge Jackson uses DOJ’s ready concession that Congress had legitimate oversight interests in problematic gun trafficking investigations against it. DOJ didn’t challenge Congress’s investigation as illegitimate, but it certainly argued that Congress has almost no legitimate interest in peering into DOJ’s process of drafting letters to Congress. At the individual request level, DOJ vigorously challenges Congress’s need. The opinion reflects a court that appears to have prudential concerns about assigning relative values to inherently political determinations about the needs and interests of coordinate branches.

However, oversight disputes do not play out at the categorical level. They play out in the give-and-take of phone calls, letter requests, subpoenas, media availabilities, depositions, and transcribed interviews. Further, unlike judicial proceedings, there are no referees, protective orders, evidentiary rules, or motions to quash during that investigative process. By the time an interbranch dispute reaches the courts, all of those fights have happened and positions have hardened. A categorical approach is a meat axe where a scalpel is needed.

That is why I took some issue with the court’s prior ruling that that the matter is justiciable. To me, justiciability requires judicious review of the reasonableness of requests, the chilling effect of a particular disclosure, and the incremental nature of harms. So, as I wrote in October 2013:

If a court is going to resolve an important dispute between Congress and the President, wouldn’t congressional need, withholding grounds, and accommodation alternatives be the essential inquiry? … The notion that the underlying facts about controversial ATF investigative tactics have come to light and remedied should bear on analysis of Congress’s need to intrude on Executive Branch deliberations.

Likely of little solace to the executive branch, Judge Jackson cabined her rationale to “the specific and unique circumstances of this case.” In addition, the court specifically noted that its “ruling is not predicated on a finding that the withholding was intended to cloak wrongdoing on the part of government officials or that the withholding itself was improper.”

Longer-Term Win for the Executive

Of more comfort to DOJ, Judge Jackson has now ruled in favor of the Executive Branch, and against Congress, on the two most contested issues that are likely to have enduring precedential effect.

First, as I have discussed previously, the court’s August 2014 ruling held the Executive Branch may assert a deliberative process privilege in response to a congressional subpoena. Congress had argued that the deliberative process privilege was grounded in common law alone and therefore inapplicable to a separation-of-powers dispute. In Judge Jackson’s prior opinion, “the Court reject[ed] the Committee’s suggestion that the only privilege the executive can invoke in response to a subpoena is the Presidential communications privilege.”

Second, in last week’s opinion, Judge Jackson specifically held that the deliberative process privilege also applies to deliberations about how to respond to media inquiries or congressional requests. Congress had argued that the privilege is confined exclusively to policy deliberations. Rejecting that argument, the opinion notes “the Court holds that documents withheld by defendant that reveal the Department’s internal deliberations about how to respond to press and Congressional inquiries into Operation Fast and Furious are protected by the deliberative process privilege.”

As a practical matter that protection dissolved in the face of the court’s prior disclosure and incremental harm analysis. But the holding is a significant doctrinal win for the Executive branch. Many DOJ attorneys will have an impulse to appeal this ruling in order to shield the ordered disclosures, but perhaps the executive branch’s two substantial legal victories will caution against it.

Pandemic Playbook Faults

Posted on May 15, 2020May 15, 2020 by Denise Simon

Several weeks ago, Politico published an article describing how President Trump failed to adhere to the 2016 Pandemic Playbook complete with the document itself. That is found here.

Here's the Pandemic Playbook That Trump Ignored

After it was brought to my attention, I read it thoroughly and began to break it down to determine the failures and faults. NBC News has picked up the same blame mission posted today.

The summary is noted below.

Pandemic Playbook Faults

It begins with Congress when in the funding process of 2015 to 2016 or even to 2017, appropriations were never allocated to specific pandemic outbreaks other than the normal funding architecture for what is known as ICBRNR. This includes the omission of the Strategic National Stockpile inventory that was not adequate for a national outbreak, yet is annexed by individual state stockpiles including medical facility inventories. FAULT 1

The World Health Organization is the lead global organization of which the United States is the largest financial contributor to provide recommendations from assessments that include epidemiology, humanitarian/development/ public health impact, transmission/outbreak/potential for public concern. WHO was willingly prevented from doing this by the Chinese Communist Party.

Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergencies expert, asked about an international business meeting held at a Singapore hotel on Jan 20-22, said it did not appear to have spread the virus widely.

“No, I think it is way too early and much more of an exaggeration to consider the Singapore conference event a ‘super-spreading event’,” Ryan said. ( Reuters: February 10, 2020) FAULT 2

The WHO is to advise on travel, perform surveillance, infection control, tender medical cure(s) to the host country. After this advise and action by WHO, U.S. Health and Human Services then based on WHO assessments and recommendations, launches the National Emergency Action Center. WHO finally under pressure from the international community, admitted an error in its assessment of the Wuhan Laboratory on January 28, 2020. FAULT 3 (2 days later, President Trump restricted/halted flights from China into the United States).

Meanwhile, the United States through the U.S. State Department had several operations launched to address the potential global outbreak and that included running private flights to various locations around the globe to retrieve American citizens and bring them home. Further, earnest offers were being provided to Wuhan and Beijing by the USG to send in virologist and medical personnel to examine research protocols, gather lab samples, perform specimen sharing, collaborate on pharmaceuticals and treatments as well as to review global stockpiles, medical treatment infrastructure (read hospitals) and to offer proposed budget items to the U.S. Congress. Not only did were these offers extended to China, but to any other nation that was lacking in resources including Italy and Iran. FAULT 4 for China

Meanwhile as the Senate impeachment hearings began on January 16, 2020, the Trump administration launched the White House Coronavirus Task Force on January 29, 2020. The first known case of COVID -19 was reported in Washington State on January 20, 2020 as a 35 year old man had just returned from Wuhan on January 15. It was not until March 11, 2020 that WHO declared COVID -19 a pandemic. FAULT 5

As for all the other U.S. Federal agencies, they take the lead from HHS which takes the lead from WHO. The number of Federal agencies is substantial and not only do they include the normal well known agencies, they also include the Veterans Administration, USAID, Office of Global Affairs, embassies, FBI, CIA, GOARN otherwise the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network. There of course is the CDC with clinical trial research papers, various trial invitations, there is the Customs and Border Patrol and the U.S. Coast Guard for cross border travel and sea travel, the FAA and the branches of the U.S. military. Orchestrate all that for the benefit of the state Governors who hold the most significant power and responsibility when outbreaks occur. It is the Federal government that only provides guidance and assistance as a multi-state event occurs.

This summary comes from reading the Politico article on how President Trump failed the Pandemic Playbook. That is hardly the case if one actually reads the whole playbook. After the 2016 playbook was authored and published in 2015 for 2016, did Congress standup a hearing to determine funding specific to a pandemic? The playbook recommended early budget and financial analysis and supplemental funding from Congress. Did that happen? NO Fault 6.

There is more but based on the items in the playbook, it was done by committee as a result of the Ebola outbreak in 2014. The playbook per the text is merely a checklist for domestic and international guidance.

Judge Sullivan Has Now Put AG Barr on Trial by Inviting Amicus Briefs

Posted on May 13, 2020May 13, 2020 by Denise Simon

There is no longer a prosecutor on the LTG Flynn case after the Department of Justice filed the motion to terminate the case against him. It was expected that Judge Emmet Sullivan would approve the DoJ motion yet the Judge went sideways and has now asked for Amicus Curiae briefs. Exactly who receives the invitation to file those briefs is to be scrutinized.

Judge Sullivan's accusations mar Flynn's sentencing hearing ... photo

This decision by Judge Sullivan is so legally contentious that an 11 page motion to leave the the amicus brief was immediately placed into the pipeline.

Judge Sullivan’s invitation was extended to a group known as former Watergate prosecutors. These lawyers were aiding the House Impeachment Team asserting that Donald Trump

● Trump conditioned protection of the military security of the United States and of an ally (Ukraine) on actions for his personal political benefit.

● Trump subordinated the integrity of our national electoral process to his own personal political interest by soliciting and encouraging foreign government interference in our electoral process, including by Russia and China. He also appears to have demanded that Ukraine investigate a potential 2020 political opponent and pursue the conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite the unanimous conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community that it was Russia that had interfered.

● According to the evidence laid out in the Mueller report, Trump engaged in multiple acts of obstruction of justice in violation of federal criminal statutes and of his oath of office to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Because Mueller viewed Justice Department policy as precluding him from filing criminal charges against the president, the special counsel appropriately stated that these abuses are for Congress to address.

Additionally, there is yet another group that signed a letter condemning AG Barr’s motion regarding the Flynn case. This particular group was mobilized by an organization called Protect Democracy. The group was founded and is led by Ian Bassin who served as an Associate White House Counsel from 2009-2011, meaning the Obama White House. Bassin also says that the MAGA hats broke the Hatch Act law. So, this is not about a legal challenge but it is for sure political. Protect Democracy is still soliciting signatures through May 25. The Co-Founder and legal advisor is Justin Florence who most recently served as counsel in Ropes & Gray’s business & securities litigation practice group, where his practice focused on appellate and Supreme Court matters. He has represented clients in the Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, as well as at the trial level. He has previously served in the Office of the White House Counsel as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President. Justin also worked for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse as Senior Counsel on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The letter in part reads:

It is now up to the district court to consider the government’s motion to dismiss the Flynn indictment. We urge Judge Sullivan to closely examine the Department’s stated rationale for dismissing the charges — including holding an evidentiary hearing with witnesses — and to deny the motion and proceed with sentencing if appropriate. While it is rare for a court to deny the Department’s request to dismiss an indictment, if ever there were a case where the public interest counseled the court to take a long, hard look at the government’s explanation and the evidence, it is this one. Attorney General Barr’s repeated actions to use the Department as a tool to further President Trump’s personal and political interests have undermined any claim to the deference that courts usually apply to the Department’s decisions about whether or not to prosecute a case.

Finally, in our previous statement, we called on Attorney General Barr to resign, although we recognized then that there was little chance that he would do so. We continue to believe that it would be best for the integrity of the Justice Department and for our democracy for Attorney General Barr to step aside. In the meantime, we call on Congress to hold the Attorney General accountable. In the midst of the greatest public health crisis our nation has faced in over a century, we would all prefer it if Congress could focus on the health and prosperity of Americans, not threats to the health of our democracy. Yet Attorney General Barr has left Congress with no choice. Attorney General Barr was previously set to give testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on March 31, but the hearing was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We urge the Committee to reschedule Attorney General Barr’s testimony as soon as safely possible and demand that he answer for his abuses of power. We also call upon Congress to formally censure Attorney General Barr for his repeated assaults on the rule of law in doing the President’s personal bidding rather than acting in the public interest. Our democracy depends on a Department of Justice that acts as an independent arbiter of equal justice, not as an arm of the president’s political apparatus.

You can read the letter and see the signatures by clicking this link.

Trump Halts Federal Retirement Accounts Investing in China

Posted on May 12, 2020May 12, 2020 by Denise Simon

In February of 2020, this site published an article describing the California Public Pension Fund’s investment in Chinese stocks could lead to national security risks and even spying. The value of the fund is $3.1 Billion. Meanwhile, Speaker Pelosi refuses to approve House committee hearings on anything related to China….

The Chinese Communist Party has both different accounting rules for corporations reporting financial data and or refuses to release any accounting data. How and why Chinese companies are listed on U.S. Stock Exchanges in the first place is an unanswered question and one that is likely being reviewed now by the Securities and Exchange Commission along with several other agencies due to a very contested relationship between the U.S. and China due to the virus outbreak.

Please find linked a complete list of all Chinese companies listed on the NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, and NYSE American, the three largest U.S. exchanges. As of February 25, 2019, there were 156 Chinese companies listed on these U.S. exchanges with a total market capitalization of $1.2 trillion.

An asterisk next to the stock symbol indicates a company with at least 30 percent state ownership. As of February 25, 2019, there were at least 11 Chinese state-owned companies listed on the three major U.S. exchanges.

A highlighted row indicates a company that was not included on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) September 2018 review of non-U.S. companies where the PCAOB is denied access to conduct inspections.

So as an interesting measure to begin measures against China, President Trump issued a letter to the Labor Secretary to halt investments in Federal Savings Plans in Chinese equities.

A second letter was sent by the Secretary of Labor to the Thrift Investment Board and that is found here.

Rather than the normal contested and really stupid questions that the media asks during White House daily briefings, there are some real questions that should be asked and they include all things China.

For some context on how China is all over the United States, consider the information below.

For many Chinese companies, their dreams of listing in New York are only on hold.

Some high-profile Chinese stocks listed in the U.S. such as Luckin Coffee, the self-proclaimed Starbucks rival in China, have been rocked following allegations by short-sellers that these companies faked their numbers, accusations that in some cases are now being internally investigated.

The reports are the latest challenge for Chinese initial public offerings in New York, on top of U.S.-China trade tensions and the impact of the coronavirus.

But some in the cross-border IPO business say the listing plans are just delayed, not canceled.

“I do know Chinese companies that are planning to list this summer as soon as after Labor Day,” said Jim Fields, a Shenzhen-based producer of videos for Chinese companies presenting to potential IPO investors in the U.S. China celebrates the holiday on May 1.

Fields noted the new IPO timeframe is a delay of about one to three months.

Last year, 25 Chinese issuers went public in the U.S., in addition to three special-purpose acquisition companies — companies that raise money to buy another — according to Renaissance Capital, which sells IPO-focused exchange-traded funds. That’s down from 32 Chinese listings in 2018, which was double that of the prior year and the most since 2010.

Despite geopolitical and epidemiological challenges in the first three months of this year, seven Chinese companies and three special-purpose acquisition companies went public in the U.S., according to Matthew Kennedy, IPO market strategist at Renaissance Capital.

“We suspect several more had planned to list, but delayed their offerings amid the Covid-19 outbreak,” Kennedy said in an email. “As we noted in our 1Q20 Review, China appears to be the first country emerging from the pandemic, so Chinese companies may also be first to return to the IPO market. However, these financial scandals do reputational damage to Chinese issuers broadly.”

On April 2, Luckin Coffee announced an internal investigation found the chief operating officer fabricated sales by about 2.2 billion yuan ($314 million) from the second to fourth quarter of last year. Shares have plunged more than 80% since the latest disclosure this month, and have been halted for pending news for roughly the last week.

About two months ago, investment firm Muddy Waters said it was shorting, or betting on a decline in the price of the stock, based on an anonymous report that alleged the coffee company fabricated financial and operating numbers beginning in the third quarter of last year. Luckin said at the time the allegations were “misleading and false.”

The company did not respond to a request for comment. Representatives from Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange were not available for interviews for this story.

Other high-profile U.S.-listed stocks have come under scrutiny in the last several days.

Shares of video streaming site iQiyi, which is majority-owned by search giant Baidu, dipped last week after a report by Wolfpack Research alleged the video company inflated revenue by about $1 billion to $2 billion. Muddy Waters said it assisted Wolfpack with the report and is also betting against iQiyi’s stock. The Chinese company said in a statement it believed the report contained “errors” and was “misleading.”

Tutoring company TAL Education announced last week it suspected an employee of inflating sales for its “Light Class” product, which accounts for about 3% or 4% of the company’s total estimated revenues. TAL said the employee has been taken into custody by the local police. More here.

Grenell is on a Mission to Expose the Unmaksing Scandal

Posted on May 11, 2020May 11, 2020 by Denise Simon

Primer: (Hint, Flynn was not a target to be unmasked, but remember the name Mary McCord and the unmasking list will be fascinating)
Back in 2017 to set up what is about to happen in coming days –>

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is accusing top political aides of President Obama of making hundreds of requests during the 2016 presidential race to unmask the names of Americans in intelligence reports, including Trump transition officials.

Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, said the requests were made without specific justifications on why the information was needed.

“We have found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information,” Nunes wrote in the letter to Coats.

The letter was provided to The Hill from a source in the intelligence community.

In March, Nunes disclosed that he had seen data suggesting Trump campaign and transition officials were having their names unmasked by departing officials in the Obama White House.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice and CIA Director John Brennan have acknowledged making such requests though they insisted the requests were for legitimate work reasons.

Nunes recused himself from his committee’s work on its investigation over Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign after a controversy over his charges about Obama-era unmasking.

The chairman had reviewed intelligence reports on White House grounds that he said showed unmasking of Trump officials by Obama aides. Democrats accused him of working with the White House to make the disclosures.

In Thursday’s letter, Nunes said the total requests for Americans’ names by Obama political aides numbered in the hundreds during Obama’s last year in office and often lacked a specific intelligence community justification. He called the lack of proper justifications a “serious deficiency.”

His letter noted requests from senior government officials, unlike career intelligence analysts, “made remarkably few individualized justifications for access” to the U.S. names.

“The committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration,” Nunes wrote. “Of those requests, only one offered a justification that was not boilerplate.”

Sources familiar with the Nunes letter identified the official as then-U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power.

Power did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nunes also wrote that “Obama-era officials sought the identities of Trump transition officials within intelligence reports.”

Nunes said he intends to introduce legislation to address concerns about the unmasking process impacting Americans’ privacy.

Ordinarily, Americans whose email or phone data or conversations are intercepted by the National Security Agency without a warrant overseas are legally required to have their names redacted or masked with descriptions like “U.S. person 1” to protect their identities in intelligence reports.

But beginning in 2011, Obama loosened the rules to make it easier for intelligence officials and his own political aides to request that the names be unmasked so they could better understand raw intelligence being gathered overseas.

The change has been criticized by liberal groups like the ACLU and conservatives like Nunes because of the privacy implications.

***

Media late last week showed Ambassador Ric Grenell and Acting DNI Director walking into the Department of Justice holding a satchel. Now we may know the contents.

In part from ABC News:

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified a list of former Obama administration officials who were allegedly involved in the so-called “unmasking” of former national security adviser Michael Flynn in his conversations with the former Russian ambassador during the presidential transition, a senior U.S. official tells ABC News.

Grenell, who remains the U.S. ambassador to Germany along with being the acting DNI, visited the Justice Department last week and brought the list with him, according to the official.

His visit indicates his focus on an issue previously highlighted in 2017 by skeptics of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, specifically allegations that former officials improperly unveiled Flynn’s identity from intercepts of his call with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

In May 2019, Trump empowered Barr with declassification authority for his broader investigation into the Russia probe.

While the law requires that identifying information of U.S. persons picked up during foreign surveillance be “masked,” high-ranking intelligence officials can request the identities be revealed if they feel the information is necessary to further understand the intercepts.

Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice has openly acknowledged unmasking the identities of some senior Trump officials during the presidential transition but has strenuously denied ever leaking any identities and said nothing she did was politically motivated. More here.