MAJOR UPDATE on Trump's 18,000 Lies: Piling Up With More Wild BS Stories

Trump's Conspiracy Vault Somewhere in Here

This is a Major Update: On the most-recent BS from Trump and nearly the entire GOP with this breaking development:

Wow, plenty of egg for a lot of GOP faces, vis-à-vis: Flynn's name was never “masked” on key intelligence document and thus could not have been “unmasked” (Report from The Hill) – highlights:

An FBI report on communications between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak never redacted Flynn's name, despite GOP allegations that Flynn was “unmasked by the Obama administration.”

One former official told the Washington Post: “When the FBI circulated [the report], they included Flynn's name from the beginning. There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.”

Republicans have maintained that whichever Obama administration officials were involved in the leak of information about Flynn's phone call with the Russians to the news media were involved in a crime, as it is a felony to release classified materials without going through the proper channels.

Trump himself has suggested that former President Obama was involved in the effort, which he has dubbed “Obamagate” and referred to that in multiple tweets and at White House news conferences in recent days. 

Trump’s allies are casting the unmasking requests as evidence of a malign effort to damage Trump through leaks to the media.

For example: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News last week: “They were unmasking anyone and everyone so that they could leak information to a press that was willing to take that illegal information to build a fake, phony narrative, to set up numerous people on the Trump team, not just General Flynn.”

More on that below from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Original Post Starts Here:

WASHINGTON (The AP) — Trump and his GOP allies are misrepresenting the facts behind the legal case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as they seek to allege improper behavior during the Obama administration in the 2016 presidential campaign cycle. 

Specifics: 

Trump: “OBAMAGATE!” — Tweet (May 13)

Trump: “Biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA.” — Tweet (May 14)

THE FACTS: He’s making an unsupported claim that former President Barack Obama broke the law. Trump and his supporters have made the unmasking of Flynn one of their major talking points, claiming that it proves the Obama administration unfairly and illegally targeted Flynn and other Trump associates.

Legal Note: There is nothing illegal about “unmasking.” The declassified document also states that the unmasking requests were approved through the NSA’s “standard process rules.”

Earlier last week when he was asked by reporters to define Obama’s criminal offense in the alleged “Obama-gate” Trump as is so routine, failed to articulate anything criminal.

Trump (May 11): “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.” (Pointing to a specific reporter)

During surveillance of foreign targets, names of Americans occasionally pop up in conversation, either because the foreigner is talking to or about them. For privacy reasons, those names are “generally concealed, or masked,” before the intelligence is distributed to administration officials.

U.S. officials can ask the agency that collected the intelligence to unmask the name if they think it is vital to understanding the intelligence. 

Trump casts unmasking as sinister, however, the number of identities unmasked in response to such release requests has actually increased during the first years of the Trump administration from the last year of the Obama administration.

Trump addressing the criminal case against Flynn that Trump's DOJ is now seeking to drop said: “This was all Obama, this was all Biden. These people were corrupt, the whole thing was corrupt, and we caught them.” — interview (May 14) on Fox News (naturally)

THE FACTS: He’s suggesting partisan politics by the Obama administration were completely behind Flynn’s investigation. That's incorrect.

From Trump Sycophants:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: “The unmasking of General Flynn by the Obama Administration regarding conversations during the presidential transition are deeply troubling and smell of politics, not national security.” — statement (May 13)

THE FACTS: There is nothing from newly released material that suggests the unmasking requests were rooted in politics rather than national security. There were indeed multiple Obama administration officials, including then-Vice President Biden, who asked the NSA to disclose the name of an American whose identity was concealed in intelligence reports. 

That American was revealed to be Flynn. But there’s nothing inherently unusual about the requests, and the documents released by the Trump administration say the people who made the requests were authorized to receive the underlying intelligence reports.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY): “But it should be and is illegal to listen to an American’s conversation. And it’s even worse if you’re listening to an American who just happens to be your political opponent from the opposite party.” — interview (May 13) on Fox News (of course)

THE FACTS: It is not illegal to listen to an American’s conversations, and law enforcement officials do it routinely with a warrant or court order. But in any event, that’s not what happened here.

No one was listening intentionally to an American’s conversation. Instead, U.S. officials learned of the conversations that involved or mentioned Flynn during surveillance of foreign targets.

My 2 cents: All this underscores once again and clearly shows that Trump is a conspiracy nut and uses mostly, Fox to peddle his crap. This Flynn case proves that beyond any doubt. 

He brushes aside any and all facts as shown above in favor of his own hunches, gut feelings, and itchy palm theories – all of which that are totally wrong 99.9% of the time.

Trump is in hole and just can’t stop digging.

Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.