Trump claims with zero evidence that Susan Rice committed a crime

Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) said the House panel and the Justice Department should determine whether Rice committed a crime, as President Trump asserted in an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday.

Rice asked for the identities of those Americans picked up during surveillance of foreign nationals when it was deemed important context for national security, and she did not ask that the information be disseminated broadly, according to this former official. US intelligence agencies routinely do legal surveillance of foreign nationals thanks to a section of law in the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act", generally referred to as FISA.

As a procedural matter, an intelligence briefer would have had to clear a requested unmasking with the head of the agency providing the intelligence.

It's not illegal to unmask the names of Americans caught up incidentally in surveillance.

Rice, meanwhile says it's "absolutely false" that the previous administration used intelligence about Mr. Trump's associates for political purposes.

Multiple reports from conservative news outlets have characterized Rice's unmasking requests as suspicious, but no credible report has suggested she broke the law, as she held the authority to make such requests. Though public figures like Rice face a higher standard in bringing such claims, Culhane said she could contend Trump demonstrated a "reckless disregard" for the truth. Ultimately, she said no evidence of collusion between Russian officials and Trump associates was found, and that finding was shared by the intelligence community in a report at the end of Obama's term.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on Thursday that he and his committee would pursue the evidence in their investigation wherever it leads, but that so far nothing substantiates the White House's Rice storyline. "They were going to use the intelligence apparatus to attack Trump, and I think they did".

"The FBI will continue to work with the congressional oversight committees on their requests", the spokesperson said.

"Our requests are simply not being answered", said one House Intelligence committee source about the lack of responsiveness.

"Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like 'U.S. Person One'".

Rice became a favorite target of conservatives after the 2012 attacks on a USA diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, when she was sent out to do television interviews with talking points about the attacks that later proved to be incorrect. After viewing the same information, Ranking Member Adam Schiff also said he could not discuss the details and then began muting his criticism.

"I don't think we should discount how big a deal it was that Susan Rice was looking at these, and she needs to be asked, did President Obama ask her to do this?"

Democrats insist the new focus on Susan Rice is a distraction.