Surveillance

You knew this was coming. In light of James Comey being fired early Tuesday night as FBI Director by President Trump, the knives were out on CNN Wednesday morning with New Day co-host Chris Cuomo interrogating, interrupting, and generally losing his mind while going after White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway.

In one of the most noteworthy moments from Face the Nation host John Dickerson’s all-access weekend with President Trump, an angry and peeved President shooed away Dickerson following a tense exchange about accusations the Trump team were spied on by then-President Barack Obama and his administration during the campaign.

It looks like former President Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice will get a reprieve. With all the hullabaloo from President Donald Trump's military action last week in Syria's ... do we call it Syria's civil war or a massacre? ... it now appears that Rice's mishandling of surveillance is going to subside from the headlines temporarily. 

A simple news segment about the media coverage of Syria spun wildly out of control during Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN. It started with Foreign Correspondent Lara Setrakian noting how little coverage the Syrian civil war received in the early years. But it ending with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, going off the rails and declaring that “We need to understand the historical…

As evidence that Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and then his transition team, were under surveillance by the Obama administration for political reasons continues to mount, the stubborn refusal by CNN's Don Lemon to acknowledge this reality is turning into a national joke. Thursday evening, Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy got so exasperated at Lemon's deep state of denial, that he asked: "Don,…

The move-the-goalposts crowd now defending the Obama administration's pre- and post-election surveillance of Donald Trump and his associates continues to cling to the notion that it was all done in connection with possible Russian influence during the presidential election campaign and that nation's alleged subsequent attempts to influence the new administration during its transition. If that's…

As an intelligence surveillance scandal involving Donald Trump threatens to turn back on Susan Rice and the Obama White House, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Matthew Rosenberg ran interference for the previous Democratic administration in Thursday’s edition with “Trump, Offering No Evidence, Suggests Rice Committed a Crime.” The text box: “A president’s attack on an ex-national…

As though it was a running theme for MSNBC on Wednesday night, multiple expert panelists acted as though they couldn’t understand why the public has trust issues with former UN Ambassador Susan Rice. “And one thing [President Donald Trump] said in the interview that is true, Susan Rice is not a particularly polished public performer,” declared New York Times journalist Glenn Thrush on Chris…

Ken Dilanian, intelligence and national security reporter for NBC News, posted Tuesday on the emerging controversy over the “unmasking,” by President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice, of the identities of Trump associates whose names were originally redacted in intelligence reports. The title to Dilanian’s piece, “What Is Unmasking, and Did Susan Rice Do Anything Wrong?”  made it safe…

On Tuesday’s edition of Hardball, MSNBC host Chris Matthews and MSNBC political analyst/Mother Jones D.C. bureau chief David Corn were unglued over the Susan Rice “unmasking” controversy, suggesting that it was racist and sexist for these accusations to be leveled at the former National Security Adviser because she’s never done anything wrong.

Appearing on the Tuesday edition of the Fox Business Network’s After the Bell, Media Research Center founder and president Brent Bozell didn’t mince words when it came to the liberal media’s scant coverage of the Susan Rice “unmasking” story, ruling “CNN has been on a jihad” against outlet that have dared cover it.

The Jeffrey Zucker-led CNN continued to make a fool of itself on Tuesday, downplaying the Susan Rice story of leaking/unmasking of intelligence dispatches as if it were the Zika virus. Hilariously, it’s attracted significant attention from not only the Fox News Channel but MSNBC. NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell led her eponymous MSNBC program at noon Eastern with a 16-and-a-half-minute…

The wagon-circling campaign to protect Obama administration and intelligence community officials who spied on Donald Trump and his transition team during his presidential campaign and post-victory transition is moving into hyperdrive. On Monday, CNN's Don Lemon proclaimed that "there is no evidence whatsoever" supporting Donald Trump's claim about having been "spied on illegally" (note the…

On Tuesday, CNN New Day anchor Chris Cuomo sidestepped reports that Barack Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice may have abused her authority in unmasking intelligence reports regarding communication between President Donald Trump's transition team and Russia. Instead, he blasted outlets like Fox News: "President Trump wants you to believe he is the victim of a 'crooked scheme,' his words…