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May 14, 2020

Ben Rhodes melts down over Grenell's unmasking of Flynn's 'unmaskers'

By Monica Showalter

Former White House spin doctor Ben Rhodes isn't taking acting director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell's unmasking of Gen. Michael Flynn's Obama administration unmaskers very well.

Here's some of his wild flurry of tweets and retweets:

He wasn't even named in this tranche of documents, but some of his pals were.

According to Sundance, over at the Conservative Treehouse, regarding the list of Obamatons actively involved in surveilling and unmasking Flynn for political purposes:

It is important to remember, these intercepts are part of the normal function of monitoring foreign communications.  There is nothing nefarious about the monitoring and there is nothing nefarious about a foreign person contacting the incoming administration, via General Flynn, to begin preparing for the change in administrations.

However, what is completely alarming and disturbing, is the extent to which the Obama administration went to share the contacts and transcripts of the calls with a myriad of government officials.  That’s where the list comes in.

The Obama administration officials obviously wanted to know and disseminate the communication of incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

In other words, they did their questionable unmaskings in order to leak their findings to the press.

Sundance notes that the unmaskings released were limited in scope to just National Security Agency unmaskings, and solely related to the Flynn case. 

There's plenty more out there.  They include a whole host of other Obama-led government agencies and a blizzard of unmaskings of all sorts of people under illegal surveillance — not just Flynn, by those who decided to use the power of government for political purposes.

Rhodes in fact seems to be pre-spinning the actions of the unmaskers — who can be read about here.

"Criminalize routine intelligence work"?  In light of the recent revelations about the FBI's effort to get Flynn on process crimes since there was no evidence he was a spy, calling the unmaskings "criminalizing" is pretty rich.  The crime here was the Obama administration's effort to frame Flynn, and the effort went straight to the top.  Rhodes is doing what the Obama administration was famous for its projections.

"Literally their job"?  Guess everyone unmasks political opponents through the apparat of government — is that it, Ben?  Or was it "only following orders"?  The news has since broken that Obama knew all about these Flynn unmaskings.  And his vice president, Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden, was actually named as an unmasker.

Being gullibles, as he argues, we're just too dumb to see what is going on here because the press is so right-wing.

That's the outlines of Rhodes's emerging talking points as Democrats seek to halt the release of additional information related to their malfeasance, as well as squelch any coming indictments for their criminal abuse of power.  Obviously, it's panic time with Grenell cleaning house.

Spin it all as politicization on the Trump side, according to Ben.  Rebrand the Deep State minions as honest toilers.  Declare the extraordinary number of unmaskings just doing the yeoman's job of intel.  You can bet that these takes will go into the Democrats' talking points, to be lapped up by the adoring press some time soon.

What might be behind the Rhodes frenzy?  Probably the prospect of more Grenell lists coming out, including those that may reveal even more embarrassing names of unmaskers — such as Rhodes himself.  Rhodes himself, as Sundance notes, is on the record as claiming that the Obama White House knew nothing, nothing at all, about the unmasking of Flynn, which is obviously untrue.  Now he's claiming it's all "routine intelligence" work, and any effort to question it is "politicization."

No wonder he's beating his Twitter wings so hard now.  The prospect of More to Come seems to be triggering in Rhodes a meltdown, and it all points to what's probably a nervous, guilty conscience.

Image credit: MSNBC via shareable Twitter screen shot.

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