Susan Rice, Obama's former national security advisor, is not inclined to admit the allegation that she ordered U.S. intelligence officials to unmask Donald Trump's campaign team during the last election in order to spy on them and expose them, insisting that she "leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would."
Rice's flat denial statement came out Tuesday during a live interview with NBC news anchor Andrea Mitchell, a day after former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova told The Daily Caller that she ordered intelligence agencies to spy on Trump's aides and produce "detailed spreadsheets" of their phone calls.
Unmasking Trump's associates
"What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice," diGenova said, "were spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals," noting further that the said conversations "involved no illegal activity by anybody by the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with."
In the interview with Mitchell, Rice was asked to comment on whether she sought to unmask the names of people involved in the Trump team with the intention to spy on them and expose them. Obama's former national security advisor's reply was quick and straightforward, "Let me be absolutely clear. Absolutely not for any political purposes, to spy, to expose, for anything."
Rice also denied reports about the alleged "detailed spreadsheets" of Team Trump's phone calls, claiming that they are "absolutely false.
No spreadsheet, nothing of the sort."
When asked as to whether she leaked Mike Flynn's name, Rice was as quick to deliver a triple negative reply with a laugh, "I never leaked nothing to nobody, never have and never would." Neither was she aware, she told Mitchell, of Flynn's lobbying business in Turkey.
Triggered by one of President Trump's tweets last month, which claimed that his predecessor, former President Obama.
had wiretapped him, both sides of the controversy have their own share of either confirming or dismissing the incumbent president's claim.
No stranger to controversy
For his part, Adam Housley of Fox News on Monday hinted at Devin Nunes' personal knowledge of the unmasking and leaking issue that Rice categorically denies. noting that the House Intelligence Committee chairman has been the subject of criticism from Democrats for having viewed "pertinent documents on White House grounds and announcing their contents to the press."
To further prove his point, Housley also recalled Susan Rice's alleged participation in a misinformation campaign when as the U.S.
ambassador to the U.N. she appeared on several Sunday news shows to depend the Obama administration's claim that the attacks suffered by the U.S. consulate in Libya on September 11, 2012 was triggered by an Internet video.
Also recalled was Rice's statement in an interview with ABC News in 2014 where she claimed that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl "served the United States with honor and distinction," "an American prisoner of war captured in the battlefield." Unfortunately for the former national security adviser, Sgt. Bergdahi is currently the subject of a court martial case, facing charges of desertion and misbehavior relative to his post in Afghanistan.
All of these point to the fact, according to Housley, that Susan Rice is no stranger to controversy.
