Biden appoints people who spied on Trump team

 Epoch Times:

As Joe Biden constructs his new administration, individuals from the Obama administration are quietly resurfacing in positions of power. Some of these people are well known, others lesser so. But they all played critical roles at various times during the Obama administration.

Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser and now the “top adviser to the president on domestic policy and related decisions,” has admitted to participating in the unmasking of members of the Trump transition team. Unmasking is the process whereby a U.S. citizen’s identity is revealed from collected surveillance.

Initially, Rice publicly denied the allegations, claiming that “I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.” Two weeks later Rice stated that she had not done so for “for any political purposes.” It was later reported that Rice told House investigators that “she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York.”

Rice was also a participant in an early January 2017 meeting with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, FBI Director James Comey, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates where President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak was discussed.

According to a filing in the Flynn legal case, notes from FBI Agent Peter Strzok revealed that “former President Obama, James Comey, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, and apparently Susan Rice discussed the transcripts of Flynn’s calls and how to proceed against him. Mr. Obama himself directed that ‘the right people’ investigate General Flynn.” According to Strzok’s notes, it also appears that “Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act” that would initially be used to pursue Flynn.

Rice, whose level of participation in the spying on the Trump 2016 campaign is still not fully known, sent herself an email on Obama’s last day in office detailing events that took place during this meeting. In addition to Flynn, Rice also noted that Obama asked his team to be “mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully [with the incoming Trump team] as it relates to Russia.”

Meanwhile, Samantha Power has been named as administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development. Her position has not yet been confirmed. Power was the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration. According to a July 27, 2017, letter to then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) noted that “one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration.” That official was later identified in the media as Power. For her part, Power has denied that she was the person making the unmasking requests.

In addition to the better-known names from the Obama administration, there are other lesser-known members of the new Biden administration who had played roles, sometimes crucial ones, in the surveillance of the Trump transition team.

John Carlin, currently the acting deputy attorney general, is involved in the DOJ’s investigation into the events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. capital. Carlin recently confirmed that more than three hundred people have been charged in relation to the events on Jan. 6 and more than two hundred and eighty have been arrested. Carlin told reporters on Feb. 26 that the investigation is “moving at a speed and scale that is unprecedented.” Earlier in his career, Carlin was the deputy chief of staff and counselor to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, who would later be appointed as special counsel during the Trump administration.

During the Obama administration, Carlin was the assistant attorney general for national security and head of the DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD) from April 2014 through October 2016 and was involved in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign.
...

There is much more.  Does it make sense that a special counsel should be appointed to examine the illegal spying on the Trump campaign?