We can understand when a socialist dictatorship like Venezuela disintegrates into chaos, but it is not much different than the ongoing coup against the constitutionally elected President Trump and his administration by political operatives of former President Barack Hussein Obama.

Despite multiple investigations of alleged Russian collusion dating back to Trump’s, shocking to liberals and progressives, election, the only crimes we know have been committed have been the leaking of classified information by Trump opponents, starting with the illegal unmasking of former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn.

Flynn was an outspoken critic of President Obama’s Middle East policy which included the betrayal of Iraq and the American lives lost there, which precipitated the rise of ISIS, whose rise Obama willfully ignored. Now we are learning the unprecedented scope of the illegal unmasking in intelligence reports of Team Trump members by unqualified members of the Obama administration for the political purpose of first derailing the election of President Trump and then the undermining of his administration. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes revealed in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats his concerns the Obama operatives had used national intelligence information for political purposes. As Fox News Politics and Catherine Herridge reports:

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has questioned whether Obama officials improperly sought the names of Trump transition members in this way -- and, in the letter obtained by Fox News, Nunes provided new details about what his investigators have found.

“[T]his Committee has learned that one official, whose position has no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama Administration,” he wrote to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

Only one request, Nunes wrote, “offered a justification that was not boilerplate and articulated why” the identity was needed for official duties.

Three of the nation’s intelligence agencies received subpoenas in May explicitly naming three top Obama administration officials: Former CIA director John Brennan, former national security adviser Susan Rice, and former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power.

This is nothing less than an attempted coup, sedition against the government of the United States by official sworn to uphold the Constitution. The sheer volume of unmasking requests by people such as Samantha Power who have no legitimate reason to make such requests speaks volumes of their political purpose. As Nunes made clear in his letter, the political agenda behind these unmasking requests was quite clear:

Explaining his concerns, Nunes said in the letter that “Obama-era officials sought the identities of Trump transition officials within intelligence reports” without offering any “meaningful explanation” as to why they needed or how they would use the information.

The committee, Nunes wrote, “is left with the impression that these officials may have used this information for improper purposes, including the possibility of leaking.” He noted that some of the requests were “followed by anonymous leaks of those names to the media.”

Sen. Tim Kaine has carelessly thrown out the word “treason” regarding charges of Team Trump collusion with the Russians, whom he and others claim is trying to subvert our democracy. It is clear that it was not the Russians, but Team Obama that was and still is trying to subvert our democracy. The breathtaking subversion and criminal activity that is involved here is only now becoming apparent:

Herridge delivers the false “patriotic denials” of the ringleaders of the unmasking operation, with a Power spokesperson saying, “Any actions she took were in the context of her National Security Council position advising ‘president’ Obama and Power has been unambiguous about the ‘need’ for Congressional Russia investigations.” Not investigations into her own or her cabal’s connections, just the phony ones they’re trying to pin on the President.

Herridge quotes a spokesliar for Rice who said, “Unmasking was done for intelligence, not political purposes” and noted that there was “no immediate response from Brennan.”

Brennan called for a coup against President Trump earlier this week from the stage of a conference of globalist, deep state, anti-Trump establishment types in Aspen.

It would appear the coup has been underway for quite awhile. Team Obama’s protests that these unmasking were for national security purposes rings as hollow as many other claims from the Obama administration. Former U.N. ambassador and Obama National Security adviser Susan Rice, arguably the leader of the serial unmaskers, has made a career of lying for the Obama administration in covering up both its incompetence and its motives, starting with Benghazi.

Obstruction of justice? How about President Obama secreting away in his presidential library for five years records regarding Susan Rice’s involvement in unmasking the names of Team Trump officials in intelligence reports? From Breitbart News:

The National Security Council cannot hand over records relating to former National Security Adviser Susan Rice’s surveillance of Americans, because they have been moved to the Obama presidential library and may be sealed for as many as five years, conservative watchdog Judicial Watch announced Monday.

The NSC informed Judicial Watch in a letter dated May 23 that materials related to Rice’s requests to know the identities of Americans swept up in surveillance of foreign targets, including any Trump campaign or transition officials, have been moved to the library.

The NSC’s Director of Access Management John Powers said in the letter:

Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library. You may send your request to the Obama Library. However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, Presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.

Judicial Watch earlier this year filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for those documents, including of communications between Rice and any intelligence community member or agency regarding any Russian involvement in the 2016 elections, the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers, or any suspected communications between Russia and Trump officials.

As much as Flynn has taken fire as being an architect of unspecified collusion with the Russians, Susan Rice has been like the iceberg that sank the Titanic -- barely visible above water but dangerous enough maybe to sink the Trump administration’s ship of state.

As reported by Circa News, Rice, while serving as Obama’s National Security Adviser, requested the unmasking of the names of Team Trump officials mentioned in the so-called “incidental” surveillance  of the Trump transition team:

Computer logs that former President Obama’s team left behind in the White House indicate his national security adviser Susan Rice accessed numerous intelligence reports during Obama's last seven months in office that contained National Security Agency intercepts involving Donald Trump and his associates, Circa has learned.

Intelligence sources said the logs discovered by National Security Council staff suggested Rice’s interest in the NSA materials, some of which included unmasked Americans' identities, appeared to begin last July around the time Trump secured the GOP nomination and accelerated after Trump’s election in November launched a transition that continued through January.

The intelligence reports included some intercepts of Americans talking to foreigners and many more involving foreign leaders talking about the future president, his campaign associates or his transition, the sources said. Most if not all had nothing to do with the Russian election interference scandal, the sources said, speaking only on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the materials.

Ordinarily, such references to Americans would be redacted or minimized by the NSA before being shared with outside intelligence sources, but in these cases names were sometimes unmasked at the request of Rice or the intelligence reports were specific enough that the American’s identity was easily ascertained, the sources said.

Well, isn’t that special? While Trump’s pick for this sensitive post was under scrutiny Obama’s adviser was doing opposition research which involved data mining classified intelligence reports. Rice requested the unmasking of names, something only three people, according to Circa, were authorized to do:

Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures. Sometimes the Americans’ names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

If Susan Rice had worked for Richard Nixon, she could have been one of his Watergate “plumbers”, perhaps retiring as plumber emeritus. We are all familiar with Susan Rice’s tour of the Sunday talk shows after the Benghazi terrorist attack. 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.

But Susan Rice is only the poster child for the criminal Team Obama leakers. They are numerous as cockroaches. Now we find that not only did FBI Director James Comey leak classified information to the media, but so too, allegedly did the FBI’s General Counsel, James A. Baker. As Circa News reports:

FBI General Counsel James A. Baker is purportedly under a Department of Justice criminal investigation for allegedly leaking classified national security information to the media, according to multiple government officials close to the probe who spoke with Circa on the condition of anonymity…

Baker is a close confidant of former FBI Director James Comey, and recent media reports suggested he was reportedly advising the then-FBI director on legal matters following private meetings the former director had in February with President Trump in the Oval Office.

Forget Watergate, Democrats. Compared to your own criminal enterprise, Watergate was indeed a third-rate burglary. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, you have a lot of work to do and a lot of people to prosecute for their crimes against the government and people of the United States.

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.