Top Republican's attempt to steer the Trump-Russia probe toward 'unmasking' may be about to backfire spectacularly

A top Republican's attempt to deflect in the Trump-Russia probe could be about to backfire.
At the heart of the dispute is why the Obama administration requested the "unmasking" of Trump associates involved in conversations with Russian officials.
The documents obtained by the chair of the House Intelligence Committee could be trouble for some of the Trump associates involved.

The Post reported that Kushner, then a top transition official and now a senior adviser to the president, discussed the possibility ofsetting up a secure line of communication between Trump's transition team and Russia when he met with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December. Kislyak relayed the request by phone to his superiors in Moscow in a conversation that was promptly picked up by US eavesdroppers.

Kislyak's call, which apparently described an attempt to bypass the US's national-security and intelligence apparatus, would have gone into an intelligence report distributed among top government officials like Susan Rice, President Barack Obama's national security adviser.

It also would have raised a big red flag, said Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and NSA.When asked earlier this year ifhe would have sought to unmask the US person cited by Kislyak as having proposed a secret back channel to Russia, Hayden was unequivocal.

"Oh my, yes," he told Business Insider. "Anyone would have."

"That's the obvious motive," the aide said, adding "The Democrats feel that Nunes has gone rogue, or that he's trying to undermine the committee because he no longer serves in the top position on this investigation."

Nunes stepped aside from the Russia investigation after telling the press and Trump

"Pushing the 'unmasking' line only leads to more information about why the requests were made,"said Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the NSA. "Not a path that's been helpful to his cause thus far."

Responding to criticism of the subpoenas, Nunes tweeted at the time that he was "seeing a lot of fake news from media elites and others who have no interest in violations of Americans' civil liberties via unmaskings."

Current and former US intelligence officials have acknowledged that leaking the identities of US persons named in intelligence reports is illegal. But requests by top administration officials, like Rice, to identify which US persons foreign agents are speaking to or aboutwould not have been unusual or against the law.

Washington Post reported

Rice, for her part, has denied that she ever requested unmaskings for political purposes — but any politically motivated unmasking request would most likely be shot down by the NSA anyway.

"The NSA is notoriously conservative in revealing US identities in its reporting," Hayden told Business Insiderearlier this year. "Obviously, a request from the national security adviser to unmask an identity would be given great weight. That said, it is not automatic and goes through a carefully documented process at the NSA before an identity is unmasked."