Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice was the official that requested "unmasking" of Donald Trump and his associates.

Former National Security Adviser and Ambassador Susan Rice. Fox News. 

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice was the Obama official that requested "unmasking" Donald Trump and associates from gathered intelligence. Fox News. After this information was unmasked, it was spread to the rest of the National Security Council as well as CIA director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The names were collected incidentally during normal  intelligence gathering. Normally when names are collected this way they are supposed to be "masked" and deleted but in some cases people are allowed to unmask those names when there is a national security issue, threat against the subject or when a crime was committed. There is no evidence that any of those things happened. 

My Comment:

This is a huge story and it is getting very little play outside of conservative media. Part of that is that Fox News and others reporting this story are relying on unnamed sources. There is certainly an argument to be made that unnamed sources are poor form, but given that the whole "Russian interference" conspiracy theory that the media has been running with for months with has been pretty much exclusively been based on stories with unnamed sources, it makes me think that the real reason is good old fashioned partisanship in the mainstream media. 

So why is this story important? Well, for one, it is illegal to unmask people unless you have a good reason. It's legal if there is a threat to national security, a crime has been committed or someone's life has been threatened. If none of those things are true, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes suggests that there wasn't, than Susan Rice committed a felony. That's a huge deal and it could lead to a senior Obama administration official going to prison. 

Second, there is the question as to why this information was unmasked and spread. If Nunes is correct and there was no connection to the Russia issue, then why was this information released? My guess is that it was done for political reasons. Though we don't know if this information got any further than the government, it seems likely that it did. 

I am guessing someone passed this information on to the campaign of Hillary Clinton or the DNC to help in the election against Donald Trump. There seems to be no other reason for this information to be unmasked and spread so far. The kind of information scooped up by our intel agencies would have obvious value to the Clinton campaign. Since much of this intel was contacts with foreign governments and individuals, Clinton and her camp could figure out what Trump's policies could be. 

Though this information was not enough to win the election for Hillary Clinton, I am guessing it allowed her to do better than she would have otherwise. That's fairly obviously cheating and it is probably illegal as well. At the very least it makes the Watergate scandal look like a joke. I don't know for sure that it happened yet but I think it is extremely likely. 

Of course, I have to point out that despite the fact that the Clinton campaign cheated in this and many other incidents, she still lost. Imagine how badly she would have lost if her campaign and the Obama administration had played fair? I am guessing it would have been a landslide victory for Donald Trump... 

Finally, this scandal could blow up much further then Susan Rice. I have very serious doubts that she did this on their own. Given how famous the Obama administration was for micromanaging everything, I think it's extremely likely that Barack Obama knew about this and probably ordered it personally. I seriously doubt that Susan Rice would have gone out on a limb like this if she didn't have the backing of the president. If true, then there is a small possibility that Barack Obama himself could go to prison. Maybe that's the reason why Obama isn't in the country right now... 

That's a huge story and one that isn't getting any coverage at all. Earth shaking news but you would never know it if you watched or read mainstream media. The only coverage I have seen outside of conservative outlets like Fox News and Breitbart is by left wing blogs attacking the story. The only exception I saw was Eli Lake at Bloomberg. That is the state of journalism today. Just pathetic...