Former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice. (Screenshot: CBS News)

(CNSNews.com) -- Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department (DOJ) and the National Security Agency (NSA) for information about Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice's communications concerning alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 election, the hacking of DNC computers, and the "unmasking" (identification by name) of any Trump campaign or transition team personnel as part of U.S. intelligence gathering activities.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton explained: “We want to know about the Obama White House involvement in the unprecedented spying on Donald Trump and other political opponents."

“This intelligence operation may have led to the illegal ‘unmasking’ of Americans and the leaking of intelligence information to foment the story of Russian hacking of the DNC and sinister Russian influence on Trump and his associates," he said. "The Trump administration has an opportunity to expose what the Obama White House was up to.”

President Barack Obama and his National Security Adviser Susan Rice. (Infowars)

The lawsuit was filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia because the DOJ and NSA did not respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests previously submitted by Judicial Watch.

Those FOIA requests, submitted on April 4, 2017, asked for the following:

-- Any and all requests for information, analyses, summaries, assessments, transcripts, or similar records submitted to the Department of Justice (National Security Agency) or any official, employee, or representative thereof by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice regarding, concerning, or related to the following:

-- Any actual or suspected effort by the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government to influence or otherwise interfere with the 2016 presidential election;

-- The alleged hacking of computer systems utilized by the Democratic National Committee and/or the Clinton presidential campaign;

-- Any or actual or suspected communication between any member of the Trump presidential campaign or transition team and any official or employee of the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government; or

-- The identities of U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.

The timeframe for any communications is from Jan. 1, 2016 to the present, more than a year.

Susan Rice, the former National Security Adviser to President Obama, has refused to testify before a subcommittee of the Senate Intelligence Committee about her reported role in revealing the identities (unmasking) of people in the Trump campaign who were swept up in regular intelligence gathering by U.S. entitities.

Columnist Andrew C. McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, says, "The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests."

Rice is also the former Obama official who went on national television after the Benghazi attack in 2012, when four Americans were killed, and falsely blamed the attack on an anti-Muslim video.