Top Republicans are explaining exactly why the Obama Administration’s “unmasking” scandal is a big deal… and how it could destroy Joe Biden.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who serves as the chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee, went on Fox News to break the scandal down for the American people.
“Well, in a FISA court surveillance operation, the U.S. government can only surveil foreign people associated with terrorists,” Johnson began. “When they’re monitoring their phone calls, they will sometimes inadvertently pick up the conversation with somebody talking to an American citizen.”
“When those transcripts are released, the identity of the American citizen is masked,” Johnson said. “And so there’s a very limited number of people in the administration that can request that those American citizens’ names be unmasked, because, again, those shouldn’t – American citizens should not be captured in these foreign surveillance investigations.”
“And it is, from my standpoint, pretty curious that the Vice President of the United States would be requesting unmasking in this case of General Flynn eight days before he left office,” Johnson continued.
He added: “This is outrageous what the Obama administration and members of it high up in the administration were doing toward – during the election toward the tail end of their administration, and the ones that were held over, what they did in the early days of the Trump administration as well.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also went after Biden in a recent press conference–calling Biden’s involvement in the scandal “shocking.”
“Today, I received the shocking answer that Vice President Biden and more than a dozen Obama administration officials requested and received the power to unmask General Flynn during his phone call with the Russian ambassador,” Paul said. “The fact that Vice President Biden and all of the president’s inner circle individually requested to unmask General Flynn is very troubling.”
“Unmasking involves revealing the identity of an American’s private phone conversation without a constitutional warrant, to eavesdrop on that conversation,” Paul said. “What makes this even more troubling is that this American was a high-ranking adviser to an incoming president of the opposite party. This is incredibly troubling and shocking that the previous administration, under President Obama, under Vice President Biden’s specific instruction, was eavesdropping on an American, an American adviser to the next president.”
Paul then went for the jugular:
“There’s been much conjecture in recent days that President Obama was specifically directing this, we now know at the very least, Vice President Biden was in this up to his eyeballs.”
A reporter then asked that, if President Trump had done this, would Paul consider it to be an impeachable and possible criminal offense.
Paul said it would be.
“This is about eavesdropping on your opponent and eavesdropping on the new president’s top advisers,” Paul continued. “The fact that Vice President Biden is directly involved with unmasking of a political opponent – think about it.”
He continued: “You remember we went through this thing called impeachment? They said the president was using the government to go after a political opponent? This is Vice President Biden using the spying powers of the United States to go after a political opponent; he’s caught red-handed here. Vice President Biden is caught red-handed eavesdropping on a political opponent’s phone calls.”