Sen. Rand Paul has previously been a thorn in President Donald Trump’s side, having run against him in 2016 and loudly opposing his efforts to repeal Obamacare last month. | Getty Rand Paul offers backup to Trump on monitoring claims

Sen. Rand Paul gave President Donald Trump some backup Monday on his unfounded claim that President Barack Obama had wiretapped him.

Paul raised concerns over a news report that former national security adviser Susan Rice had sought to obtain the identities of Trump-linked individuals whose communications were swept up in government monitoring of foreign nationals. Rice's requests to "unmask" Trump associates likely were not illegal, but they offer some political ammunition for Trump, who has continued to stand by his wiretapping claim even though FBI Director James Comey and other officials have debunked it.


The Kentucky Republican echoed the president in pointing to the Obama administration for stoking "all this innuendo about whether Russia was in cahoots with the Trump campaign."

"In reality, they were using basically an espionage tool to eavesdrop or wiretap" Trump aides, he told reporters. "It's inappropriate, and it should be illegal."

Paul previously has been a thorn in Trump’s side, having run against him in 2016 and loudly opposing his efforts to repeal Obamacare last month. But the libertarian-leaning senator, who went golfing with Trump over the weekend, apparently has found common ground with the president on this issue.

Paul called for stronger limits on “unmasking people in the political process" and suggested that the power to uncloak unnamed people could turn into a partisan weapon.

“Way too many people can unmask individuals,” Paul told reporters, raising a pointed hypothetical: “What if I decide to unmask the conversations of my Democratic opponents?”

Paul said he is considering legislation on unmasking in response to Rice’s reported involvement in alleged monitoring of Trump aides’ conversations, a connection first reported by Bloomberg. The issue may come up as Congress debates reauthorization of surveillance laws that expire later this year.

Such unmasking occurs when U.S. persons are incidentally caught up in surveillance of foreign targets. Intelligence reports based on such surveillance are supposed to mask the identities of people in the United States. But certain high-ranking officials can request that their identities be revealed under certain circumstances.

On Sunday, before Bloomberg broke the news about Rice, Trump claimed in an interview with the Financial Times that his wiretapping claims were "turning out to be true," though the unmasking of identities is not evidence to support a physical wiretap of Trump Tower — something even lawmakers sympathetic to Trump say did not happen.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is planning to join with Paul on a new privacy bill to be released Tuesday, made clear that incidental monitoring of Americans' communications with foreign nationals would be a critical priority for him in the coming domestic surveillance debate.

"I feel very strongly that to even start that, we have to know how many law-abiding Americans are swept up in the searches when we target somebody overseas," Wyden told reporters Monday, while declining to address the Rice report specifically. "I support targeting threats overseas, but I also think as global communications start being more and more integrated, we need to know how many Americans are being swept up."

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For Trump allies, Rice’s reported attempts at unmasking are a vindication for the president and House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. The California Republican set off a political conflagration last month after charging that Trump aides may have had communications intercepted and then briefing the White House about the matter before fellow lawmakers, even though White House officials were Nunes’ sources.

“I’ve been very impressed with Devin Nunes,” Paul said, “I may be the only person around. All of the intelligence hawks don’t like him because he found something and he’s willing to talk about it with the president.”

Republican enmity toward Rice dates to Obama's first term and deepened during the years-long investigation into the violent 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

Paul alluded to that mistrust in his response to the Bloomberg report. Rice was "responsible for all the dissembling over the Benghazi stuff," Paul said, and "now turns out to be the one investigating Trump transition people. That's a big deal."