Susan Rice Denies leaking Names of Officials in Intelligence Reports

Former national security adviser under President Barack Obama Susan Rice said on Tuesday she absolutely never looked to uncover names of Trump campaign and transition officials for political purposes who were concealed in intercepts by intelligence and said suggestions she leaked their identities were completely false.

Rice said she did not leak anything to anybody and never has and never would. That was in response to the most recent charges as well as countercharges that are flowing from investigations that are politically charged into the interference by Russia in last year’s presidential election.

Since they surfaced for the first time this past weekend, the reports involving Rice quickly overtook the revelations about connections to the Kremlin that have been dogging President Donald Trump for months.

The subject was the dominant theme on Tuesday across cable news as well as on Twitter.

As has become customary, the president took to Twitter to voice his opinion on this matter by retweeting an article that Rice had ordered intelligence documents on him.

Many Republican lawmakers say that Rice should have to testify before inquiries in Congress into what intelligence in the U.S. had said were efforts by Russia not to only cause problems with the presidential race, but to tip the scales in the favor of Trump.

Lindsey Graham and GOP senator from South Carolina said that every American needs to know whether or not President Obama’s national security adviser had been involved with unmasking transition members of Trump for political purposes.

Beyond the tweets from Trump, the White House appeared surprisingly restrained on Rice, as its Capitol Hill and media allies expressed their outrage on behalf of it.

The ranking Democrat from the House Intelligence Committee Rep Adam Schiff from California called all the attention being focused on the former national security adviser just a diversionary tactic.

Schiff said that Rep Devin Nunes a Republican and the committee’s chairman, who was part of the transition team for Trump and a Californian as well, should recuse himself.

On Tuesday, Rice was asked if she would be willing to testify, and replied that everyone should see would is to come.

Investigations about the involvement of Russia in the electoral process are important, they are serious and each American should be interested in them going in whatever direction the evidence takes them, said Rice.

The current focus on Rice arrives as lawmakers attempt to determine why Nunes visited the White House a few weeks ago to look at documents he later said had suggested that names of the transition team of Trump were unmasked improperly.