Susan Rice Reportedly Said Unmasking of Trump Officials Was Due to UAE Crown Prince Meeting
Exclusive: Susan Rice privately told House investigators why she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials https://t.co/prxcdzXSfK pic.twitter.com/1vGOfcvoKZ
— CNN (@CNN) September 13, 2017
Former Obama White House national security adviser Susan Rice met with House investigators recently and the issue of unmasking came up.
A new CNN report out from late this afternoon––filed by senior congressional reporter Manu Raju––cites multiple sources saying Rice requested the names be unmasked “to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York late last year.”
Per CNN:
The crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, arrived in New York last December in the transition period before Trump was sworn into office for a meeting with several top Trump officials, including Michael Flynn, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his top strategist Steve Bannon, sources said.
The Obama administration felt misled by the United Arab Emirates, which had failed to mention that Zayed was coming to the United States even though it’s customary for foreign dignitaries to notify the US government about their travels, according to several sources familiar with the matter. Rice, who served as then-President Obama’s national security adviser in his second term, told the House Intelligence Committee last week that she requested the names of the Americans mentioned in the classified report be revealed internally, a practice officials in both parties say is common.
This meeting, as CNN reports, “preceded a separate effort by the UAE to facilitate a back-channel communication between Russia and the incoming Trump White House.”
You can watch the CNN report above.
[image via screengrab]
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