White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany laid out all the reasons President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are up in arms about revelations on the Obama administration’s use of the intelligence community.
McEnany detailed how Vice President Joe Biden was found to have requested the unmasking of Gen. Michael Flynn just one day before the Washington Post published a story on Flynn that relied on leaks from the Obama administration. She also laid out how several former Obama administration officials had testified they found no empirical evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, but said the opposite publicly. (RELATED: Everything You Need To Know About ‘Unmasking’ And Michael Flynn, All In One Place)
A White House reporter asked McEnany what Trump thought was criminal about the unmasking scandal. She referenced the two Republican senators who declassified a list of 39 Obama-era officials who all requested submitted unmasking requests for information about Flynn.
The list included Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey. (RELATED: Documents Shed Light On Media Leak Central To Michael Flynn Case)
Unmasking requests are a common practice in the intelligence community, but Republicans allege Obama officials intentionally targeted Flynn in an attempt to leak damaging information on the Trump campaign to the media.
Republicans say the some of these actions were illegal, but there has yet to be any official move from politicians or law enforcement.