Was Surveillance of Trump and His Colleagues “Incidental” or Intentional?

AND WHO “ORDERED” IT?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Apr. 3, 2017) — In an amplification of several earlier internet and broadcast reports from Fox News, on Monday Adam Housley revealed that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice was said by intelligence sources to have played a role in “unmasking” the names of U.S. citizens, and specifically, Trump and those associated with his presidential campaign, in intelligence reports to which she was privy.

Housley described the “surveillance” of Trump and his campaign colleagues as “incidental,” meaning that phone calls in which they participated or discussed were aimed at a foreign citizen or citizens.

At 10:04 p.m. on “Hannity,” Housley incorrectly said that Eli Lake of Bloomberg View was “the first” to report that Rice was the Obama-regime official who requested that U.S. citizens’ names be revealed.  However, Mike Cernovich of dangerandplay.com was the first to report Rice as the “unmasker” on Sunday night at medium.com, while Lake’s story was published on Monday morning.

At 10:07 p.m., Hannity interviewed Lake, during which Lake said that Rice became the focus of an intelligence official who observed an unusual pattern in requests from her for “unmasking” Trump and his associates in during the presidential campaign.

Rice reportedly did not return phone calls and emails from Lake, Sara Carter of Circa News, and Cernovich on Monday.  Carter and her collegaue, John Solomon, published their own report on Monday.

Carter, also a guest at the same time as Lake, said that beginning in 2011, the Obama regime relaxed the strict confidentiality rules surrounding U.S. citizens whose communications are captured in U.S. surveillance of foreigners.  Executive Order 12333, altered by Obama in early January, broadened the distribution of certain intelligence to all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

Housley’s article first states that “The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office.”

However, later in his article, he states, “When names of Americans are incidentally collected, they are supposed to be masked, meaning the name or names are redacted from reports – whether it is international or domestic collection, unless it is an issue of national security, crime or if their security is threatened in any way. There are loopholes and ways to unmask through backchannels, but Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection. Sources told Fox News that in this case, they were not.”

Several reports on Monday said that the surveillance of Trump began at least a year before he took office and perhaps just as the primaries began early in 2016.

When Trump first accused Obama of “wiretapping” his office at Trump Tower toward the end of the campaign, it was inferred that Obama “ordered” it, which spurred controversy throughout the mainstream media.  In an interview with PBS on March 22, Rice echoed reports from many left-leaning sources stating that a U.S. president cannot request that an American citizen be surveilled.

If Trump and some of his family members were surveilled before Trump became the Republican nominee, would they have been engaged in or have been the topic of conversations held by “Russians” or others?

Was the surveillance of Trump and his campaign team “incidental” or purposeful?  If the latter, was it legal, or was it unwarranted government spying?