Even as the congressional investigation into possible Russian intrusion into the recent presidential campaign and the Trump team’s possible improper contacts with the Russians continues, another story emerged this week that has raised a whole lot of eyebrows.
Bloomberg News reported on Monday that President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, accessed numerous intelligence reports covering wiretap intercepts of conversations Russian officials had with members of the Trump campaign and transition teams.
This was not necessarily illegal on Ms. Rice’s part, since she was legally entitled to see the material in her official capacity. But did she have a political motive in seeking the information? And was the information used at any point to assist the Hillary Clinton campaign and then, after the election, as part of an attempt to undermine the Trump transition and nascent presidency?
The Bloomberg report noted that Ms. Rice’s interest in the intercepts seems to have begun at about the time Mr. Trump secured the Republican nomination last July and spiked after his election in November and the transition through January. No information has surfaced demonstrating that there was anything improper about any of the intercepted calls.
The Rice revelations came following President Trump’s disputed claim that President Obama ordered phones at Trump Tower to be wiretapped,
On Tuesday it was reported that Ms. Rice had ordered U.S. spy agencies to produce “detailed spreadsheets” of phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president. The information is said to involve taps of Russian officials’ phone calls with the Americans which captured the voices of all those on the calls. This may or may not prove to be the practical equivalent of what Mr. Trump was alleging. (In any case, no one has claimed that those phone calls were illegal.)
As noted, to this point no evidence has surfaced of wrongdoing on anyone’s part. But it is clear that the issues of possible foreign interference in our election and the possible corruption of government agencies are clearly matters of the utmost concern.
