There was one big scandal in the 2016 election.
And it wasn’t Russia.
Now Americans are learning the Obama administration committed unspeakable crimes against Donald Trump.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes blasted the Obama administration for abuse of power.
Nunes sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats describing Obama officials putting in hundreds of requests to unmask American citizens caught up in surveillance.
These requests included Trump transition officials and had no intelligence value.
The Hill reports:
“Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, said the requests were made without specific justifications on why the information was needed.
“We have found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information,” Nunes wrote in the letter to Coats.
The letter was provided to The Hill from a source in the intelligence community.
In March, Nunes disclosed that he had seen data suggesting Trump campaign and transition officials were having their names unmasked by departing officials in the Obama White House.”
In March, Nunes announced he had reviewed information about the number of unmasking requests and who was making them had greatly disturbed him.
The Hill also reports:
“The chairman had reviewed intelligence reports on White House grounds that he said showed unmasking of Trump officials by Obama aides. Democrats accused him of working with the White House to make the disclosures.
In Thursday’s letter, Nunes said the total requests for Americans’ names by Obama political aides numbered in the hundreds during Obama’s last year in office and often lacked a specific intelligence community justification. He called the lack of proper justifications a “serious deficiency.”
His letter noted requests from senior government officials, unlike career intelligence analysts, “made remarkably few individualized justifications for access” to the U.S. names.
“The committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration,” Nunes wrote. “Of those requests, only one offered a justification that was not boilerplate.”
Sources familiar with the Nunes letter identified the official as then-U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power.
Power did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nunes also wrote that “Obama-era officials sought the identities of Trump transition officials within intelligence reports.”
Americans can be unmasked for legitimate intelligence purposes.
But were Obama officials requesting the unmasking of Trump officials so the names could be leaked for political gossip?
That would be a scandal on par with Watergate.