Flynn Was NOT Unmasked. Never Masked At All.

Last post, I reported on Dan Bongino's claims that Flynn was not unmasked, because he was never masked in the first place.
The unmasking was a ploy to hide how the content was really come by.

Now Andy McCarthy digs into it in a very clear manner:

Unmasking? The Real Story Is When Flynn Was Not Masked in the First Place

Highlights (from the article):

The Chronology

Grenell’s list notes an unmasking request for Flynn on December 28, 2016 — weirdly, by the U.S. ambassador to Turkey. There are no unmasking requests on December 29, the date of the Kislyak call. Nor is there one during the week after that. In fact, the next listed unmasking occurred on January 5, 2017. That one is attributed to President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough. This highlights how central that day is to the anatomy of the Democrat-crafted “collusion” narrative. It was on the morning of January 5 when Obama, Vice President Biden, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice discussed Flynn and the Trump–Russia investigation with FBI director James Comey and acting attorney general Sally Yates.

Yet we know that participants in that meeting already knew about Flynn’s identity as Kislyak’s interlocutor. The exhibits attached to the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case relate that Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, knew about it no later than January 3, the day he briefed Mary McCord, who ran the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Plus, Yates recalled being surprised that Obama already knew about the Flynn–Kislyak call (and, in fact, is the one who told Yates about it). Clearly, the news had been percolating at the highest levels of the Obama administration for at least a couple of days, although it may not yet have made its way down to Joe Pientka, the FBI case agent on Trump–Russia, who on January 4 signed off on a memo closing the FBI’s Flynn counterintelligence investigation (“Crossfire Razor”).

To summarize, the list provided by Grenell indicates no unmasking of Flynn between December 28 (the day before the call) and January 5, even though news of Flynn’s identification was already circulating on January 3 (when McCabe briefed McCord about it).

(break)

The CIA and Non-FISA Intel Ops

Well, the possibility that first leaps to mind is: Maybe Flynn was a FISA surveillance target. That is, his interception was not incidental. Rather, the FBI was monitoring him under FISA because he was a suspected agent of a foreign power — the theory based on which the bureau opened their counterintelligence investigation of Flynn in August 2016. But that can’t be right. After an exhaustive investigation of the FBI’s abuse of FISA, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that there is no evidence the FBI “requested or seriously considered FISA surveillance of . . . Flynn.” (IG Report’s “Executive Summary,” p. vi.)

It is more likely, then, that the Flynn–Kislyak call was captured by intelligence operations that are not governed by FISA.

(end)

Flynn was either tapped by the CIA or a "friendly" foreign agency.
It's hard to say which would be worse of all three options.

Please read the article in full.



BTW, we had a great radio show yesterday:
Gaylene Deitering, Ed Bonderenka and Phil Stargell interview former federal judge Professor William Wagner of the Great Lakes Justice Center.
We discuss the ramifications of the lockdown.