President Trump keeps the pressure on former Obama officials who 'unmasked' Michael Flynn
Former Vice President Biden denies knowledge of Flynn criminal probe; reaction on 'The Five.'
There has been an effort by the mainstream media to dismiss the declassified unmasking requests of former national security advisor Michael Flynn as a right-wing "conspiracy theory."
On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers released the list that came from the office of acting DNI Richard Grenell showing several top Obama officials who had made dozens of requests to unmask Flynn between November 2016 and January 2017 before President Trump's inauguration. Among those on the list were former Vice President Joe Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper, former U.N. ambassador Samatha Power, former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and former White House chief of staff Denis McDonough.
NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck knocked the liberal cable news outlets for depicting the controversy surrounding the unmasking as illegitmate, telling Fox News it's a "real story."
"CNN and MSNBC truly believe they can pull a fast one over their viewers by suggesting that their years of Trump-Russia collusion coverage was entirely legitimate while declaring any support to the unmasking list is akin to a fake news conspiracy," Houck said.
MSNBC HOST FAILS TO ASK BIDEN ABOUT FLYNN UNMASKING REQUEST AFTER HE DENIED ANY INVOLVEMENT IN CASE
When the news broke on Wednesday, a CNN panel quickly dismissed the release of the list as a partisan effort by Trump and his supporters on Capitol Hill and that the conduct of the Obama officials was perfectly legitimate.
CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Pérez refuted Republican lawmakers who had sounded the alarm amid the revelations of those who sought to identify Flynn in classified transcripts during the transition period.
"According to the Republicans, they think there is some suspicion here that Americans names were being unmasked or being revealed in these intelligence reports from the NSA ... and they believe this shows a plot to bring down President Trump's incoming administration. What they don't show is any of that," Pérez told CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. "These documents don't show any political motivations. It don't show us that anybody who shouldn't have had access to this information was getting access to it."
CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero described the breaking news on Wednesday as a "100 percent contrived scandal," insisting all of the requests were "lawful" and "appropriate."
"This is absolutely, 100 percent politics and really, in the current environment given what's going on in the country, I think it's really a disgraceful abuse of the declassification system and an unfair disparaging of the intelligence community process," Cordero told the panel.
MSNBC'S ANDREA MITCHELL ASKS THOSE SOUNDING ALARM ON FLYNN UNMASKING TO 'STOP TRYING TO GASLIGHT US'
CNN political correspondent John King suggested that President Trump used a similar political tactic during the 2016 election when then-candidate Trump pointed to "innuendo" regarding the Clinton email scandal as a way to depict his political opponents as "untrustworthy" as him, calling it a "gimmick."
"What does it say to you that the president, who has been in office for more than three years, that he's still obsessing over President Obama, calling it 'Obamagate', at one point saying, 'Obama committed the biggest political crime in American history. What does that say to you? Blitzer asked.
"It says that he believes his path in politics has always been grievances. Find an enemy, throw your grievances against that person," King responded. "Right now, if you look at the poll, he has a very competitive election, but even his own campaign is alarmed. ... When he is looking to change the subject and when he is looking to air his grievances, he often goes back to the prior administration. Now, President Obama has been a favorite target since day one. President Obama's vice president is now the presumptive Democratic nominee."
When CNN anchor John Berman pressed former DNI James Clapper, now a CNN analyst whose name was on the list, about his involvement in the Flynn case on Thursday, the on-screen graphic labeled the unmasking findings as a "conspiracy" throughout the Thursday interview.
In CNN's "Reliable Sources" newsletter, media correspondent Oliver Darcy declared Flynn unmasking is a "dishonest disinformation campaign" against Trump's political opponents and that any coverage that legitimizes concerns about the unmasking is "reprehensible."
Darcy then insisted that the "real story" is that the president of the United States is "polluting the information wells during a pandemic to help distract from the bad news and boost his re-election efforts."
MSNBC anchor Brian Williams dismissed the revelations on Thursday night as a "PR effort" and urged former CIA Director John Brennan, an MSNBC contributor whose name also appeared on the unmasking list, to explain to viewers why the story isn't worth the hype.
"Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski insisted that the declassification is "the latest distraction" from President Trump's own controversies, in this case, the "never-ending death toll" from the coronavirus outbreak.
"I think what we're seeing here is the extent that Donald Trump will go to distract," Brzezinski explained. "It's very hard to distract from a virus and from 90,000 people dead and counting. But most people who know Trump very well know he will do anything, absolutely anything. And that is the perilous position this country is in. And the question is how far Republicans will go with him. They seem to be willing to do anything."
"Let's remind our viewers that Michael Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI, admitted to his crimes. This is a scandal and an invented scandal that president, President Trump... doesn't even understand himself. He's being given opportunities to explain it. It's more of a campaign slogan, 'Obamagate' with an exclamation point," co-host Willie Geist later said.
MSNBC host Ali Velshi also assured his viewers that what President Trump coined "Obamagate" was, in fact, a "conspiracy theory."
While the act of requesting the unmasking of American citizens may follow standard protocol, critics point to the illegal leak of Flynn's name, which was classified information at the time, to The Washington Post in a January 2017 report.
The Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald suggested to "The Story" anchor Martha MacCallum that the hostility towards the reporting of the Flynn unmasking list stems from the weakened Russian collusion narrative that the mainstream media pushed for much of the Trump presidency.
CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE
"For years there's been no dissent and no questioning treated in the mainstream media when it comes to the Russiagate scandal, the Mueller probe," Greenwald said about the reporting from CBS News correspondent Catherine Herridge. "I think it's important to remember that over the last month, there's been a series of newly-released documents that have been in strong tension with the conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia that have prevailed in the media world for three years now, and several of those scoops were reported by her."
"Both outlets love to throw around the term 'gaslighting,' but perhaps they should look at themselves in the mirror before leveling that charge at the White House," NewsBusters' Houck told Fox News. "The American people have certainly learned a lot about government surveillance in the last few decades, so the general retort that everything was routine and done for the country's best interest has and will be met with skepticism."