A new development is unfolding in former President Barack Obama’s spy scandal, as former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power has now been uncovered as a new surprise suspect who likely aided the previous administration in spying on the Trump campaign and the transition team.

As the investigation to find any Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election continues, an announcement was made by the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday that subpoenas are being issued to get to the bottom of the situation, as new questions arise about the Obama administration’s unscrupulous activities.

“Buried inside the paper’s account was a potentially bombshell development: The committee is seeking information from the FBI, CIA and NSA on unmasking requests made by Power,” WND reported. “Unmasking is the revealing of names within the intelligence community of U.S. citizens gathered in foreign surveillance. The new subpoena immediately raises the question: Why would Power be seeking such information?”

"We're finding out more and more every day about the misuse of the surveillance capabilities of our intelligence agency by the Obama administration – a misuse that ended up leading to the monitoring of people who were in the Trump campaign. There's a lot more I'm sure that will come out about this in the months ahead." Gary Bauer, chairman

Campaign for Working Families

Bread trail to Obama

The reasoning behind such foul play is not clearly understood, given Power’s role as a diplomat for the U.S. to the U.N., but her direct connections to Obama are beginning to make more sense as to why such spying on Trump’s officials would take place.

“She was, however, a close confidant of President Obama, and she served him as a foreign-policy adviser when he was a senator,” WND’s Garth Kant explained. “It would hardly seem to have any obvious relevance to her job as U.N. ambassador. And members of the intelligence committee have previously shown concern about Obama officials unmasking Trump associates.”

The intelligence committee is reportedly intensifying its probe into Powers’ collusion with Obama, according to Fox News sources.

Now, President Donald Trump’s longstanding allegations that the Obama administration spied on his campaign for political reasons is being investigated by Republicans on the intelligence committee.

“It has already been established that the Obama administration collected surveillance information on Trump associates during the campaign, and on the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, during the transition,” Kant pointed out. “The Obama administration claimed it was investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. However, in the seven months since the investigation was launched, no evidence of such collusion has ever emerged, as even all of the top Democrats involved in the inquiry have had to admit.”

Powers was by no means the only alleged accomplice in the probe, as a total of seven subpoenas were issued on Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee.

“Three of them, signed by chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, (R-Calif.), explicitly asked the FBI, CIA and NSA for information on unmasking requests involving three top officials of the Obama administration: former ambassador Power, former White House national security adviser Susan Rice and former CIA Director John Brennan,” Kant continued. “Brennan admitted to the House Intelligence Committee during testimony Tuesday that he instigated the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia – even though he had seen no evidence of that. Brennan claimed he had seen some contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials, and he was worried that might lead to collusion. So, he referred the matter to the FBI, which launched an investigation.”

A Democratic leader was responsible for the remaining subpoenas.

“The other four subpoenas issued by the Intelligence Committee on Wednesday were requested by the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, (D-Calif.), and seek information on Trump attorney Michael Cohen and on Flynn,” Kant informed. “Democrats are still hoping to find some evidence of collusion between the Trump team and Russia.”

Still infiltrating the system out of office

The controversy plaguing Flynn was devised by Obama’s machinations.

“Flynn was fired as national security adviser three weeks into the job after his name was unmasked by someone in the Obama administration and then leaked to the press,” he recounted. “Anonymous sources claimed Flynn discussed inappropriate topics before the inauguration with the Russian ambassador, such as possible sanctions relief. Trump said Flynn had not discussed anything inappropriate but was fired for not telling Vice President Mike Pence the whole truth.”

In April, Rice unapologetically admitted that she played a part in revealing the names of Trump team members that were obtained through foreign surveillance that was conducted in a covert fashion.

“It was not uncommon,” she told MSNBC at the time. “It was necessary at times to make those requests.”

However, a month earlier, she pleaded that she knew nothing about any of the covert operations after Nunes broke the news.

“I know nothing about this, [and] I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today,” Rice told PBS on March 22 – an account that was later revealed to be a lie.

She later tried to backpedal in her own defense.

“Rice tried to defend her actions by telling MSNBC she did nothing inappropriate and that she sometimes sought the names of people in intelligence reports, as part of her job,” Kant explained. “But, if that was true, why did she not tell the truth to PBS on March 22? In her defense, Rice merely asserted to MSNBC that she did not leak unmasked names to the press and that the unmasking wasn’t politically motivated. The big questions now are whether those statements are true.”

She denied that political motivations had anything to do with the spying.

“This is not anything political, as has been alleged,” Rice insisted. “The allegation is that somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That is absolutely false.”

Rice is wrong

Yet, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said Rice’s account was simply not true.

“The national-security adviser is not an investigator,” McCarthy wrote in National Review. “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.”

McCarthy, who is considered one of America’s top legal minds, argued that the mere fact that Rice was not an investigator proved that she was involved for political gain.

“The thing to bear in mind is that the White House does not do investigations – not criminal investigations, not intelligence investigations,” McCarthy asserted. “There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities – an intelligence need based on American interests – the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies. Her interest was not in national security, but to advance the political interests of the Democratic Party.”

Obama out of the White House but not out of trouble

It was also noted that documents that were previously top secret show that the Obama administration should be in serious trouble.

“[Obama's NSA engaged] in some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community," the confidential report stated, according to Circa News. “[More than 5 percent of searches seeking upstream Internet data on the NSA's section 702 database] violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011."

In fact, Obama violated the U.S. Constitution and exhibited un-presidential behavior by letting – and quite possibly orchestrating – such activity take place under his watch and supervision.

“It wasn't until Oct. 26 of last year – just two weeks before President Donald Trump was elected – that the Obama administration disclosed the violation issue at a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court hearing,” The Christian Post (CP) reported. “According to court documents dated April 26, 2017, the court scolded administration officials, telling them that their failure to disclose these violations showed an ‘institutional lack of candor.’ The court also considered it a ‘very serious Fourth Amendment issue.’"

Regardless of Rice’s contention that she did nothing wrong, the court’s decision stated otherwise.

"Since 2011, NSA's minimization procedures have prohibited use of U.S.-person identifiers to query the results of upstream Internet collections under Section 702," the court’s unsealed ruling declared, according to CP. "The Oct. 26, 2016 notice informed the court that NSA analysts had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court."

Rice’s and the Obama administration’s violations were so egregious that even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had a problem with their conduct in the matter.

"I think what this emphasizes is the shocking lack of oversight of these programs," ACLU Legislative Counsel Neema Singh Guliani stated, according to Circa. "You have these problems going on for years that only come to the attention of the court late in the game and then it takes additional years to change its practices. I think it does call into question all those defenses that we kept hearing, that we always have a robust oversight structure and we have culture of adherence to privacy standards. And the headline now is they actually haven't been in compliance for years and the FISA court itself says in its opinion is that the NSA suffers from a culture of a lack of candor."

Even though the far-Left ACLU expressed disapproval, the Leftist mainstream news media – including ABC, CBS and NBC – did not cover the Obama administration’s foul play, according to the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters blog, which at the same time gave Fox News’ Bret Baier accolades for giving the story top priority during his Special Report show.

"On the day President Obama visited Los Angeles last October to yuk it up with Jimmy Kimmel, lawyers for the National Security Agency were quietly informing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that NSA had systematically violated the rights of countless Americans," Fox News Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen announced on the program. "Declassified documents, first obtained by the news site Circa, show the FISA court sharply rebuked the administration."

He then used the court’s opinion to further incriminate the former Obama administration.

"'With greater frequency than previously disclosed to the court, NSA analysts had used U.S. person identifiers to query the results of Internet 'upstream' collection, even though NSA's Section 702 minimization procedures prohibited such queries,'" Rosen quoted the judges in their ruling.