{"id":228027,"date":"2017-04-04T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=228027"},"modified":"2017-04-05T16:09:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T20:09:52","slug":"susan-ricess-denials-are-undercut-by-evelyn-farkas-impeachment-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/04\/04\/susan-ricess-denials-are-undercut-by-evelyn-farkas-impeachment-prediction\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan Rice\u2019s Denials Are Undercut by Evelyn Farkas\u2019 Impeachment Prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Let\u2019s do some audio. Let\u2019s not get too far behind here in the story so I don\u2019t have to double back too much. Where we\u2019ve left off here is that Susan Rice — by the way, CNN is now saying that she\u2019s denying having done any of this. And that is the general accepted way. You\u2019re caught cheating, you\u2019re caught breaking the law, just deny it, and that\u2019s what Susan Rice is now doing. Denying that she unmasked, denying any of this is true. CNN remains dedicated to protecting her and the Obama administration on this in an unseemly, unsightly display<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whatever CNN is, I mean, it\u2019s a laugh that they even describe themselves as journalists or being involved in news. That\u2019s not what they are. Now, they can be whatever they want to be. They can do whatever they want to do. It\u2019s the misrepresentation of who they are to everybody else that is giving them problems. There\u2019s so many people on the left and in the Democrat Party that are descending so deeply into this that they\u2019re gonna reach an abyss where returning from it is gonna be a problem. These agencies, these news organizations need more than just the low-information and lunatic Democrat base in order to survive.<\/p>\n

\"\"So Joe diGenova has confirmed that Susan Rice ordered spreadsheets of Trump campaign calls, unmasked Trump individuals in those calls. And again, folks, it\u2019s very important to remember, the White House does not investigate. They don\u2019t do investigations. They order them. You know, Trump orders an investigation into this or Obama orders an investigation, but investigating collusion between, say, a presidential campaign and a foreign government, the White House doesn\u2019t investigate that. The FBI does, the CIA does, the NSA.<\/p>\n

The White House can order it. The White House is not officially charged with investigating anything. Yet Susan Rice is doing just that. She cannot even legally request the unmasking. She has to ask the investigating agencies to do that. She can\u2019t do it herself. She can\u2019t order it done, to be more precise. She can ask for it be done, but she can\u2019t command that it be done. So if any unmasking is relevant to, say, this investigation of collusion between Trump and Russia, then it would have to be done by either the FBI, the CIA, or the NSA.<\/p>\n

And if it had been critical to know the identities of Americans caught up in foreign surveillance efforts, then the agencies that collect the information and do the investigations would have unmasked it because they are the agencies who collect and refine intelligence products for the rest of the intelligence community. In other words, as Comey pointed out, Susan Rice, Obama, the White House, they\u2019re consumers of the work the intelligence agency does.<\/p>\n

\"\"The intelligence agencies and the FBI conduct the investigations, they do the analysis, they assemble reports, they submit this. The president\u2019s daily brief is an example, any number of other examples, and then the executive branch and anybody authorized to see it are then the consumers.<\/p>\n

The data is the product. The rest of the intelligence community then sees it, and they are responsible for any unmasking. They do it under minimization standards that James Comey described as obsessive in their determination to protect the identities and privacy of Americans. And that\u2019s what this is really about in one sense. Susan Rice cannot just randomly ask and demand that anybody she wants to know about be unmasked. The intelligence agencies, the investigatory agencies do that, and they must, as Comey admitted in testimony, they are very obsessive about this. Because they are focused on protecting the identity and privacy of Americans who were not being surveilled and who are not guilty of everything.<\/p>\n

So the bottom line is this: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. The important thing here is the investigation does not require Susan Rice needing people unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities of Americans caught up incidentally in this surveillance, the unmasking would have been done by the FBI, the CIA, or the NSA. But there is no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask.<\/p>\n

And the point that I\u2019m making is since she did it, there\u2019s no official intelligence or, therefore, understandable or legal need. She was engaging in the politics of all this by requesting those names. By requesting those names and obtaining those names, she has them now as a political operator and is — well, I don\u2019t know if you could say free to disseminate, but clearly that\u2019s what she wanted to be able to do. She\u2019s the national security adviser. She\u2019s not an investigator. She\u2019s a staffer in the White House and as such, she is a consumer of intelligence. She does not generate it. She does not collect it.<\/p>\n

If she was unmasking Americans it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests. It was to fulfill a political desire based on Democrat Party interests. And that\u2019s why the media\u2019s trying to cover this up, because those objectives are theirs as well. In other words, there was no intelligence need for Susan Rice to know these names to further the understanding and knowledge of whatever is being investigated.<\/p>\n

She was not needed; she was not necessary for it; she\u2019s not required; she\u2019s a consumer, not a generator. If she wanted Americans unmasked, it was because of a political desire based on Democrat Party interests.<\/p>\n

\"\"To the audio sound bites we go. We\u2019re gonna start here with Susan Rice back on NewsHour on PBS. This is March 22nd with Judy Woodruff, who ask her the following question: “House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said today that Trump transition officials, including the president, may have been swept up in surveillance of foreigners at the end of the Obama administration. What do you know about that?”<\/p>\n

RICE: I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today. Let\u2019s back up and recall where we have been. The president of the United States accused his predecessor, President Obama, of wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign. Nothing of the sort occurred, and we\u2019ve heard that confirmed by the director of the FBI who also pointed out that no president, no White House can order the surveillance of another American citizen. That can only come from the Justice Department with the approval of a FISA court. So today, I really don\u2019t know to what Chairman Nunes was referring.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, but she did. She most certainly did. “I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.” She\u2019s surprised that she\u2019s been caught. She\u2019s surprised that she\u2019s been found out. You wait. It isn\u2019t gonna be long before all of a sudden somebody did a video that\u2019s causing this to happen. That excuse worked for them once before.<\/p>\n

Same show, PBS NewsHour March 22nd. Next question from Judy Woodruff: “As you also know, in the last few weeks the New York Times has reported that in the final days of the Obama administration, individuals went out of their way to spread information throughout the government about what they knew about intelligence that the Russians had interfered in the election last year, and that there may have been a connection with Trump campaign officials. So, that story has now been out there for several weeks. Could there be a connection here?”<\/p>\n