Susan Rice responsible for unmasking intercepts of Trump associates

"It is one of the big stories of our time".

Rice reportedly tried to learn the identities of officials on Trump's transition team whose conversations with foreign officials may have been incidentally collected during routine intelligence-gathering operations. So, if the reports had no intelligence value nor did they have to do with Russian Federation, then what could possibly have motivated the outgoing, lame-duck national security advisor to ask for the unmasking of her political rivals?

Rice also said there is an Intelligence Community process to review whether to approve demasking requests. Neither will happen, however, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Tuesday that any investigations into the claims made against Rice would be handled by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

REP. CASTRO: I wouldn't be surprised if, after all of this is said and done, that some people end up in jail.

"If so many things are described as the biggest, or the best, or the most - how to tell what really is important to this president?" Lake also broke the story that Rice asked for the demaskings in this report.

Moreover, she and her partisans insist, seeking and achieving this "unmasking" (from either the director of the National Security Agency or the FBI) was entirely within her legal right as national-security adviser. She knew that was a lie, but it was the story that the Obama administration wanted peddled, so she peddled it. "I never have and never will".

An April 3 Daily Caller report that Rice ordered US spy agencies to produce "detailed spreadsheets" of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president makes this story more interesting. Nunes has provided limited details about the information he obtained, but said there are "dozens of reports" showing that "incidentally collected information about USA citizens involved in the Trump transition" was gathered during the course of "normal foreign surveillance". If Rice asked for names to be unmasked, those would have been lower level officials or those without specific titles.

That's not wiretapping, but it's good enough for government work - and it has uncovered a rich vein for Republicans to mine as they respond to the Russia-meddling storyline. They ended their report by shifting the blame back on Trump, just as ABC and NBC did, by airing a prediction from Democrat Congressman Joaquin Castro that some in Trump's team would end up in jail after this investigation was over.

"Any information that will help find the wide extent on the unmasking and surveillance is purposely not being provided", the source said.