U.S. Attorney General William Barr has appointed another U.S. attorney to look into Obama-era corruption aimed at destabilizing the Trump administration, The Daily Caller reports.
In a statement to Fox News, Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupac said that Barr has appointed John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, to look into “unmasking” requests of Trump associates.
Bash will reportedly carry out the investigation in coordination with U.S. attorneys John Durham and Jeffrey Jenson, both of whom are also probing various aspects of “Russiagate” – the nonsensical and false narrative claiming President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign ‘colluded’ with Moscow to ‘steal the election’ from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“The attorney general determined that certain aspects of unmasking needed to be reviewed separately as a support to John Durham’s investigation,” Kupac told network host Sean Hannity.
Earlier this month, GOP senators released the names of 39 Obama-era officials who had submitted requests for intelligence reports during the presidential transition timeframe that identified then-incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
The documents, which were initially declassified by former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, showed that former Vice President Joe Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and others including then-White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough requested Flynn be unmasked. In all, 39 people made Flynn unmasking requests.
Kupac said that while the process of unmasking Americans caught up in U.S. intelligence operations is not an uncommon thing, Barr wants to know if there were political motives behind the Flynn requests.
“The motivation and the reasoning behind unmasking can be problematic,” she said. “When you are looking at unmasking as part of a broader investigation like John Durham’s investigation, looking specifically at who was unmasking whom can add a lot to our understanding about motivation and big picture events.”
She added that Bash will be “looking specifically at episodes both before and after the election.”
“The frequency, who was unmasking whom, all of the circumstances and events can shed light and give us a better understanding of what happened with respect to President [Donald] Trump.
This isn’t the first time Barr has appointed a trusted lieutenant to get to the bottom of Obama-era corruption. Recall that his appointment of Jenson, of the Eastern District of Missouri, was done to investigate the origins of the FBI case against Flynn.
