It has long been clear that the Obama administration surveilled Trump’s team and now one method of that surveillance is coming into clarity. The ‘smoking gun’ reported by James Rosen has been revealed with multiple outlets reporting that Susan Rice, the National Security Adviser for Obama, requested the unmasking of Trump officials’ names in foreign intelligence reports. Today, Rice confirmed that she had made such requests, but asserted they were proper. News reports reiterated Congressman Nunes’s claim that these reports had nothing to do with Russia and held little to no foreign intelligence value. If true, it is a major blow to defenses that this was normal activity. When taking the broader investigation and its timeline into account, it is a potentially a breathtaking abuse of governmental power with a fig leaf of legal cover. The most recent revelations further the perception that the entire investigation has been politicized from the beginning.

The earliest reported monitoring of Trump began during the Republican primary. Fox News reports that Susan Rice began requesting and monitoring intelligence reports on members of Trump’s team, including his family for up to ‘a year before he took office.’ In January the New York Times reported that the White House was in possession of these reports and regularly reviewed them. Susan Rice is best known for her infamous role in the Benghazi debacle. That incident has been torn asunder with partisan backbiting, but the simple truth is that in the middle of the election the Obama administration sent Susan Rice out to Sunday talk shows to lie about the nature of the attack on the diplomatic outpost when they knew full well that it was an organized terror attack. True to form, she brazenly lied about any knowledge of unmasking to PBS in mid-March. Now Bloomberg has reported that she was responsible for requesting unmasking of Trump associates ‘dozens’ of times. These reports look to be legally created and contained foreign communications about US persons and possibly direct communications of US persons picked up by FISA ordered surveillance. US citizen’s identities are supposed to be minimized and protected removing both direct and easily identifiable information. This pointed to another concern because some reports were written in such a way that unmasking was unnecessary due the conversation’s context.

The defense of her actions is that it her behavior was legal and normal. The Hill reports, ‘section 7.2(c) of USSID 18 permits the “unmasking” of a U.S. person’s identity if it is necessary to understand the foreign intelligence information or assess its importance. Specifically, this provision outlines several possible justifications upon which the government can rely to claim the unmasking was necessary, such as if the information indicates the U.S. person is an agent of a foreign power, is engaged in the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, may be involved in a crime, or may be the target of hostile intelligence activities of a foreign power.’

There is an inherent subjectivity to what constitutes a necessity for unmasking, and no doubt defenders of Rice will claim her requests were justified. A fuller picture is required to determine if her requests were targeted or so wide ranging that picking up some of Trump’s team was inevitable. Mass requests for unmasking would be revealing in other ways, but would help undercut the case that specific unmasking was political in nature. Another defense is that these are merely requests and that she cannot herself unmask the information. This is a rather naïve position since the person approving the request was another Obama appointee, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. There are two definitive ways to show this was politically motivated. Either the nature of her requests was obviously tailored to Trump’s team or the reports unmasked carried no defensible intelligence value. I think it is rather unlikely that either of these scenarios pans out since they could be very easily avoided. Instead this will come down to a certain level of subjectivity and for that it is important to understand her role in the Obama administration. She was Obama’s political surrogate as was her deputy Ben Rhodes. Their jobs largely consisted of spinning foreign policy for domestic consumption, see the Iran deal and Benghazi. In what was largely a defense of unmasking, a former NSA analyst makes some explosive claims on Rice’s behavior regarding intelligence reports.

‘In addition, Rice didn’t like to play by the rules, including the top-secret ones. On multiple occasions, she asked the NSA to do things they regarded as unethical and perhaps illegal. When she was turned down — the NSA fears breaking laws for any White House, since they know they will be left holding the bag in the end — Rice kept pushing.

As a longtime NSA official who experienced Rice’s wrath more than once told me, “We tried to tell her to pound sand on some things, but it wasn’t allowed — we were always overruled.” On multiple occasions, Rice got top Agency leadership to approve things which NSA personnel on the front end of the spy business refused.’

Rice is not a disinterested official, but one who managed the political side of the White House. A political operative seeking out classified information on the opposing political party raises serious red flags. When taken in conjunction with relaxing classification requirements in an openly stated attempt to disseminate the information, the optics are damning. Now, while this looks political, barring some specific evidence pointing to political intent, it is a legally defensible abuse of power. The response will be almost wholly political and therefore the extent of the political response will depend on the severity and perception of the abuse. This is not the first case that the Obama administration abused foreign intelligence for political ends. His administration spied on Israeli politicians in order to monitor Republican congressional strategy for opposing the Iran deal. Just like last time, Democrats and their media allies are doing their best to manage public perception, greatly downplaying Rice’s actions. Their determination to ignore Obama’s faults opens the door to normalizing legal political spying using national intelligence services. If Trump starts monitoring foreign government’s assessments and conversations about Democrat politicians, as the Obama admin did, they have no one to blame but themselves.