Spicer: Report That Rice Requested Unmasking Shows ‘Troubling Direction’

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer delivered the press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, on Thursday, March 30, 2017. (Photo by Cheriss May) *** Please Use Credit from Credit... White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer delivered the press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, on Thursday, March 30, 2017. (Photo by Cheriss May) *** Please Use Credit from Credit Field ***(Sipa via AP Images) MORE LESS
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White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday said reports that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice requested the unmasking of U.S. persons are indicative of a “troubling direction” in the probe into President Donald Trump’s claims that his transition officials were subjected to surveillance.

“I think we’ve been trying to say, from the get-go, that there’s been an ongoing investigation that we have supported looking into this matter,” Spicer said. “We have continued to say that I think there’s a troubling direction that some of this is going in.”

Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake on Monday reported, citing a pair of anonymous U.S. officials, that Rice requested the unmasking of U.S. persons’ names listed in intelligence reports containing information related to officials on Trump’s campaign and transition.

Lake described the documents as “summaries of monitored conversations,” and reported that some were “direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials.” He noted that Rice’s alleged requests were “likely within the law.”

Spicer questioned the press corps’ “lack of interest” in the report compared to “another set of developments,” though he did not specify what that was.

“That being said, I’m not going to start getting into a further discussion of that,” he said. “We’re going to let this review go on before we jump to it.”

“Does the White House believe Susan Rice may have done something illegal?” a reporter asked.

“I’m not going to start going down that road,” Spicer said. “We go down one road, we need to go down them all.”

Spicer was slightly less reticent during his briefing on Friday, when he claimed that members of President Barack Obama’s administration “politically used classified information” against Trump.

“More and more we are seeing that the substance of what we’ve been talking about continues to move exactly in the direction that the President spoke about in terms of surveillance that occurred,” he said at the time.

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