Former President Barack Obama’s administration spied on then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, unmasked the names of private citizens, and leaked them for political reasons.
Now that members of the Obama team are facing potential jail time, the Deep State has pulled one last, desperate attempt to bury all the evidence.
They have removed all the records from government files and put them under lock and key for five years — inside Obama’s private library.
Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demanding everything related to the alleged Russian hacking scandal — especially anything produced by Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser. In the past, Rice admitted she unmasked the names of Trump officials, feeding the phony story to the media that they colluded with Russia to steal the election.
But the government says those records are missing and are now sealed inside a library that hasn’t even been built yet in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.
“Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library,” an NSC letter to Judicial Watch dated May 23 said.
The NSC said, if the group wants, it can ask Obama to turn over the records himself… ‘pretty please.’
“You may send your request to the Obama Library,” the NSC wrote. “However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.”
Now the papers that could prove Rice broke the law are sealed — just like Obama’s college transcripts, his financial aid applications, and everything else he wanted to hide.
“It is a shell game of documents being shifted over to the library,” said Judicial Watch president Tim Fitton. “These documents are the smoking gun that investigators are looking for, and everyone knows it.”
Why? If the records turn up, lots of Obama figures could be in hot water.
Judicial Watch wrote in one of its six FOIA requests that Rice may have “contributed to the unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information.”
The whole operation looks like “unlawful domestic political intelligence operation being run out of the Obama White House,” said Chris Farrell, director of research and investigation for Judicial Watch.
Of course, Rice has denied all wrongdoing.
In April, she told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that she had unmasked the names of several Trump officials… but “absolutely not for any political purpose.” Then again, this is the same Susan Rice who lied to the American people over, and over, and over about the massacre at Benghazi being caused by an anti-Islamic YouTube video.
When Sen. Lindsey Graham asked Rice to testify, Rice’s lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler wrote, “Ambassador Rice respectfully declines” the “invitation to testify.” (Ruemmler, who used to work for the Obama White House, is a master at stonewalling. She told investigators Obama had released everything about the Solyndra energy scandal. Another 15,000 pages of documents were later discovered.)
Congressional Republicans have recently ratcheted up the stakes. Rice was one of 7 people subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee over the unmasking of Trump staffers’ names on May 31. Other Obama officials include UN Ambassador Samantha Power and CIA Director John Brennan.
Now, using a legal loophole, these records have been mysteriously moved and handed over to Obama and his loyalists for safekeeping. That’s something you’d expect in a banana republic, not the United States of America.
Instead of telling the American people whether she broke the law to smear Donald Trump, Susan Rice is playing the race card.
She has said she’s just another victim of racist, sexist, deplorable America.
Rice said she doesn’t think the subpoena is “only about race and gender,” but she’s pretty sure the fact that she’s a black woman plays a part. It definitely isn’t her fault she’s being called to account for her potentially criminal behavior.
But don’t cry for Rice too hard. According to New York Magazine, she has spent most of her time since January “relaxing: vacationing in the Maldives for two and a half weeks, playing lots of tennis, doing some writing and speaking.”
Nice work if you can get it.
Rice and a lot of other Obama officials could be in for a long stay in a concrete cell if these records ever come to light — and the president may hold the physical key himself.
According to Fitton, sealed presidential records have to be released if Congress, or the president, say they need them.
All President Trump has to do is ask. And he should, at once, to clear his good name.
The NSC noted that the Barack Obama Presidential Library can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
Maybe you’d like to write them, too?
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”