During last week’s session before the House Judiciary Committee, AG Bill Barr was asked by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) if John Durham was looking at the unmasking of Michael Flynn. During the final stages of the Obama administration, Flynn’s name was unmasked 49 times by 38 different individuals in the Obama administration. These included seven unmaskings by the Treasury Department.
Barr’s answer appears to catch the room by surprise. Barr tells the committee that a separate US Attorney, one John Bass from Texas, has been tasked with handling the unmaskings investigation. There are now five USAO’s working on parallel tracks within this investigation.
Jordan goes on to clarify with AG Barr that Bass is looking at the unmasking of Flynn and others during the final days of the Obama administration. What Barr says next has to have the Democrats in mortal fear of what Bass may be looking at. Barr notes that Bass is looking at “a much longer period of time.” There are probably some Republicans who are becoming more uncomfortable as well. I do not believe that all Republicans were ignorant of what was going on.
The relevant conversation starts around the 1:28 mark.
A Quick Review.
Admiral Mike Rogers became NSA director in April 2014.
Sometime in early March 2016 Admiral Rogers was notified by his compliance officer of a significant uptick in “About” queries, also known as 702(17) queries.
“About” queries are done against the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication. The amount of information about a person that can be gained from querying these records is significant.
For example, if you put a date and a phone number, the user will get everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a period of time.
These kinds of queries can be done against IP addresses, email addresses, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc.
It is illegal to query a US person’s data (4thAmendment). The exception to this would be if such querying would likely result in the acquisition of foreign intelligence data.
Admiral Rogers ordered a full compliance audit extending from November 1, 2015 through May 1, 2016. This order was given on or about March 9, 2016.
While the audit was underway, cursory reviews of the results being returned indicated extremely high levels of what are known as “errors.” These are accesses of US person’s data that are not permitted. Errors sometimes occur due to mis-keying of names and other human mistakes. The error rate was so high (approx. 85%) that Admiral Rogers stopped everyone from using the 702(17) “About” query option. He also blocked all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016.
A subsequent report by FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer noted, “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of the non-compliant queries since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 period coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
What this is saying is that the Obama administration had been using the NSA database for political surveillance for years. Did Maxine Waters (D-CA) almost give it all away in February, 2013?
“That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before…”
FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer later wrote in her report, “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” That is, specific individual(s) were being targeted and queried, unlawfully. Undoubtedly based on other information that has come forward, it seems obvious the primary search target, over multiple date ranges, was Donald Trump.
Just who was engaged in these illegal activities remains unclear. Those involved were redacted in the Collyer report. With an ongoing DOJ investigation into these illegal activities, it is unlikely that these names will be revealed until indictments are filed.
What is clear is that the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results.
Here’s the difficulty with all of what is being uncovered. This is just one aspect of the corruption investigation and it requires the resources of a US Attorney’s Office. And, to repeat, there are five USAO’s involved.
There are so many different activities going on that is often difficult to get one’s hands around the complete picture. Durham’s investigation has been referred to by AG Barr as “sprawling.” That may be a classic understatement by Barr. And there have been few if any leaks. And who is providing overwatch on it?
To wrap this up, I pose a question. Why did Barr answer the way he did? Jordan’s question seemed routine. Barr could have just answered that unmaskings were being looked at. Instead Barr went through the effort to announce that a different USAO was looking into the issue and that the task was much larger than Jordan had indicated. Why hasn’t the media been interested in this question?