If it wasn’t for the conservative nonprofit watchdog Judicial Watch the American public would’ve been left in the dark about the Russia hoax perpetrated against President Donald Trump, the attack in Benghazi that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to hide government emails and hundreds more investigations into government malfeasance.

On Thursday Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the “National Security Agency (NSA) for records of requests by former Vice President Joe Biden and other top Obama administration officials, including President Obama’s chief of staff, to “unmask” Lieutenant General (Retired) Michael Flynn.”

President of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton said that the FOIA lawsuit was in response to the government’s failure to turn over the documents originally requested by the watchdog group.

The documents about this illicit spy operation should be released immediately

Tom Fitton, President Judicial Watch

“The requests by Joe Biden and President Obama’s chief of staff to unmask the identity of President Trump’s top national security adviser reeks of corruption and abuse,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The documents about this illicit spy operation should be released immediately.”

It’s a huge struggle to obtain documents that actually belong to the American people. Those in Washington’s bureaucracy hold the keys to the kingdom: the documents reveal the truth and expose the corruption. In early 2017 I filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Sally Yates with regard to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. I also included specific words that I expected would expedite the matter with the Department of Justice. I finally heard back from the DOJ’s FOIA office on Thursday.

I honestly was taken back at first and thought it was some sort of scam. It was real. Guess what the official told me on the phone, “can you narrow your search terms so it will be easier for us to locate the specific documents you are referring too?”

I said angrily, ” you have to be kidding, it’s been like two years. Do you think I don’t know what’s going on here?” I realized after I hung up it’s been more than three years since I put in for the FOIA. If it wasn’t for Judicial Watch the documents would disappear into the swamp and never be remembered.

In early 2017, John Solomon and I published numerous investigative stories exposing the FBI’s malfeasance in its investigation into former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. At the time Solomon and I were working for Circa, a website division of Sinclair Media Group that has since closed.

We also published extensive reports on the government’s malfeasance with regards to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the expansion spying powers on American citizens under the Obama administration. All of this set the foundation and the stage for the majority of investigations and discoveries that led to the exposure of one of the worst abuses in power in modern political history against a sitting U.S. president.

What made matters worse is that those who weaponized the system against President Trump and his administration have many minions – known as the deep state – that are part of the extensive government bureaucracy and little has been done to hold those who tore our nation apart accountable.

Unmasking Americans, like the abuse that occurred to former Trump 2016 campaign volunteer Carter Page, is the process of disclosing the identities of U.S. citizens captured in private communications to government officials. Judicial Watch notes it is “referenced in intelligence surveillance of foreign nationals. U.S. citizens’ names are typically redacted from such reports unless a specific request is made to “unmask” them.”

Judicial Watch stated in a press release that it filed “this lawsuit after the NSA failed to respond to two separate September 1, 2020 FOIA requests.” In fact, in June 2020, Judicial Watch first sued the State Department for records of requests by former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power to “unmask” Flynn. Power had testified before Congress in 2017 that she didn’t request to unmask Flynn and that her name signed on any unmasking requests must have been done by someone else. But when declassified documents were first made public in May by the National Security Agency (NSA), it showed that she had signed unmasking requests on Flynn least seven separate times betweenNov. 30, 2016, and Jan. 11, 2017.

FROM JW PRESS RELEASE

The first request seeks “records about a January 12, 2017, request to ‘unmask’ Lieutenant General Flynn submitted to NSA by or on behalf of then-Vice President Joe Biden.”

The second request asks for “records about requests to ‘unmask’ Lieutenant General Flynn submitted to NSA by or on behalf of the following officials on the dates or date ranges indicated:

Samantha Powers – Nov. 30, 2016 to Jan. 11, 2017

James Clapper – Dec. 2, 2016 to Jan. 7, 2017

Kelly Degnan – Dec. 6, 2016

John R. Phillips – Dec. 6, 2016

John Brennan – Dec. 14 & 15, 2016

Patrick Conlon – Dec. 14, 2016

Jacob Lew – Dec. 14 & 15, 2016

Arthur McGlynn – Dec. 14, 2016

Mike Neufeld – Dec. 14, 2016

Sarah Raskin – Dec. 14, 2016

Nathan Sheets – Dec. 14, 2016

Adam Szubin – Dec. 14, 2016

Robert Bell – Dec. 15, 2016

John Christenson – Dec. 15, 2016

Sarah Raskin – Dec. 15, 2016

Nathan Sheets – Dec. 15, 2016

Adam Szubin – Dec. 15, 2016

Robert Bell – Dec. 15, 2016

John Christenson – Dec. 15, 2016

James Comey – Dec. 15, 2016

Paul Geehreng – Dec. 15, 2016

Douglas Lute – Dec. 15, 2016

James Hursh – Dec. 15, 2016

Lee Litzenberger – Dec. 15, 2016

Scott Parrish – Dec. 15, 2016

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall – Dec. 15, 2016

Tamir Waser – Dec. 15, 2016

John Tefft – Dec. 16, 2016

John Bass – Dec. 28, 2016

Denis McDonough – Jan. 5, 2017

Michael Dempsy – Jan. 7, 2017

Stephanie O’Sullivan – Jan. 7, 2017

The Deputy Assistant Director of the National Media Exploitation Center, whose name was not known – December 15, 2016

The names of officials and dates identified in the FOIA requests were taken directly from a list which was declassified on May 8, 2020, by then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell and submitted to Senators Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson on May 13.

On May 19, Senator Grassley responded and asked for “the declassification of additional information related to the unmasking of Americans around the time of the 2016 election, but also to expand the scope of our request to include information as early as January 2016. Based on our investigation and recent press reports, we are increasingly concerned that the surveillance of U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump campaign began earlier than the opening of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation in late July 2016.”