Hoekstra: Rice Likely Off the Hook in Trump Surveillance Case

"It's such an important story for our country and the world".

Trump told the New York Times Wednesday that media outlets, including the Times, have not adequately covered the story.

Trump was unclear what crime specifically he is accusing Rice of committing.

As reported by Bloomberg, an unidentified source accused Rice of "requesting the identities of USA persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign".

While Rice would not deny that she asked that names of Trump officials be demasked, she insisted the Obama administration did not spy on Mr. Trump or his staff for political purposes.

National-security experts have said that Rice's reported requests to identify who was speaking with the foreign officials before Trump was inaugurated were neither unusual nor against the law. The identities of Americans who talk with those foreigners, or who are discussed in conversations between two non-U.S. persons, are masked in intelligence reports. That is, it's a distraction from the effort to find out whether the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign adversary that was bent on surreptitiously impacting the USA election.

"It is hard to fathom how the de-masking of multiple Trump campaign and transition officials was not politically motivated". "I never have and never will". But she said it was only "to do our jobs in the national security realm" and not for "political purposes".

Rice denied that she had leaked details about Flynn's call, saying, "I leaked nothing to nobody".

However, there are 20 high-ranking officials within the USA government who have to power to approve requests to reveal those identities if they deem that information is necessary to understanding the value of the intelligence.

Much like his previous allegations that former President Obama had his phones wiretapped, Trump offered no evidence to back up his claims.

In response, Erin Pelton, a spokesperson for Rice, told CNN: "I'm not going to dignify the President's ludicrous charge with a comment". In these cases, the government would have to report the improper unmasking to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court and it could also be reviewed by an agency's inspector general, he said. US persons cannot be surveilled without a warrant, but the "unmasking" of such names can be requested if it is necessary for a national security objective. As Andrew McCarthy points out, "the thing to bear in mind is that the White House does not do investigations".

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said that if Trump is going to accuse Rice of a crime, he should make the intelligence public.