Somehow it does not surprise that former Obama Deputy Security Adviser Ben Rhodes is now a “person of interest” in the probe of who illegally leaked for political purposes the names of Team Trump players allegedly collected inadvertently in intelligence reports. He joins others on Team Obama such as Susan Rice and Samantha Power in the unmasking designed to subvert the Trump administration in what amounts to a silent coup. As Fox News Politics reports:

Ben Rhodes, the longtime aide to former President Barack Obama who once bragged he didn’t “know anymore where I begin and Obama ends,” is the new focus of a House probe examining whether Obama staffers improperly requested the identities of American citizens during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Ben Rodes, 2013, cropped from White House photo

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes wrote to National Security Agency head Adm. Michael Rogers on Aug. 1 requesting “the total number of unmasking requests made by” Rhodes in the 13 months preceding President Trump’s inauguration….

An Obama foreign policy speechwriter who became an adviser and later emerged as the key force behind creating a self-proclaimed Iran nuke deal “echo chamber” to push the controversial agreement across the finish line, Rhodes freely boasted about his success spinning information to reporters in a controversial New York Times Magazine article.

He was also known for his access to the former president. Dubbed “Obama’s foreign policy whisperer” by The Washington Post, Rhodes is the newest ex-Obama team member to have his name emerge in the slow-developing unmasking investigation.

The “Obama whisperer” has quite a track record. Rhodes was up to his eyeballs in the Benghazi corruption, helping to cover up the Obama administration’s criminal negligence that got four Americans killed and helping to craft the video lie that was repeated to the parents of the dead in front of their son’s caskets by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

That was no accident, but a calculated part of the Obama administration’s disinformation campaign to protect President Obama’s reelection chances and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chances to be Obama’s successor in the White House. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized:

Newly obtained emails on Benghazi show then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was coached by a key White House aide to lie and ignore the facts known and reported on the ground to make the administration look good.

The fish rots from the head, as the saying goes, and no further proof is needed than a Sept. 14, 2012, email from Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, contained in more than 100 pages of documents released by Judicial Watch and obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request.

That email, with the subject line: "RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 p.m. ET," was sent to other key White House staffers such as then-Communications Director David Plouffe and Press Secretary Jay Carney the day before now-National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her whirlwind tour on five Sunday news show appearances to specifically and emphatically blame an Internet video for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other nationals were killed.

One of the goals listed in the emails was the need for Rice "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy." She was also to "reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges." Her job was not to tell the truth, but to put lipstick on the Obama administration's Benghazi pig.

Now we see both Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes involved together in another scandal. During the Benghazi cover-up, it helped for Ben Rhodes to have a brother, David Rhodes, who was President of CBS News.

When you're Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and you've been tasked to prep U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on how to deflect blame from the Obama administration for the Benghazi massacre, it's good to have a brother who happens to run a TV network quite willing to push the White House spin.

David Rhodes was the boss of Sharyl Attkisson, the CBS reporter who left the network after it became well nigh impossible to continue the same dogged reporting on Benghazi as she had done on the Fast and Furious administration gun-running operation and get the truth beyond the CBS firewall.

On Monday's "Fox & Friends" program, Attkisson said she believes a concerted effort is under way to divert investigations into the deadly Benghazi attack, an effort that's being orchestrated by people close to the White House. Could she have meant Ben Rhodes and his CBS News president brother David?

If he had worked for Richard Nixon, Ben Rhodes would have been the consummate “plumber” He has tentacles deep into the media and knows how to manipulate it and use it as a disinformation tool. And even though he has gone from power, he has left behind moles that continue his dirty work.

While it does not surprise that Ben Rhodes may be involved in the unmasking scandal, it does surprise that H.R. McMaster has retained all of Ben Rhodes’ staffers as the question of who is leaking classified information for political purpose remains. That under covered story was brought up by retired U.S. Army Col. Tony Schaffer on Lou Dobbs show on Fox Business:

Ben Rhodes and Barack Obama’s staff are still in the National Security Council. H.R. McMaster has not fired any of them. Instead he fired the man who agrees with Trump’s agenda, Col. Harvey.

McMaster doesn’t see it as a problem.

“There’s no such thing as a holdover,” H.R. McMaster said back in July, referring to the career professionals who stayed on the council after the presidential transition. McMaster added that career staffers are loyal to the president.

Lt. Col. Schaffer reacted on Fox Business.

“One of the things I heard today was H. R. McMaster has not fired a number of people who worked for Obama. In fact those who worked for some of the staffers, Ben Rhodes for example, well Ben Rhodes has got his staff is still there. It’s like having a rattlesnake next to your bed and thinking somehow if you’re just nice enough to the snake it’s going to be nice. It’s not like that.”

In a Facebook post, Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick, in a has also noticed McMaster’s keeping of Ben Rhodes staff members while purging Trump loyalists:

McMaster disagrees and actively undermines Trump's agenda on just about every salient issue on his agenda. He fires all of Trump's loyalists and replaces them with Trump's opponents, like Kris Bauman, an Israel hater and Hamas supporter who McMaster hired to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk. He allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. He has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes' and Valerie Jarrett's people in place.

The colossus of Rhodes' corruption and lingering influence must be dealt with. His people remaining in the Trump administration must be fired if not investigated, prosecuted, and incarcerated. His people are undoubtedly among the criminal leakers and part of Obama’s fifth column within the Trump administration.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.