Rand Paul Calls Unmasking an ‘End-Run Around the Constitution’ as Media Attempts to Discredit

Republican Senator Rand Paul blasted attempts by the outgoing Obama administration to spy on the incoming Trump administration. He said that “unmasking is essentially an end-run around the Constitution” and that “no one should be able to spy” without a warrant.

Unmasking essentially is an end-run around the Constitution. The lesson that we should all be taking away from this is not “My political opponents should not be able to spy on me without a warrant.” The lesson should be “NO ONE should be allowed to spy without a warrant.”

Unmasking essentially is an end-run around the Constitution. The lesson that we should all be taking away from this is not “My political opponents should not be able to spy on me without a warrant.” The lesson should be “NO ONE should be allowed to spy without a warrant.” pic.twitter.com/ZfV4sZpsZn

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 21, 2020

Mainstream media outlets yesterday attempted to downplay and discredit the whole unmasking situation. They claim that a Washington Post report blows up the allegation that Biden and others improperly and illegally unmasked the former national security adviser’s identity.

They say that it revealed that Flynn’s name was never “masked” in the first place. “When the FBI circulated [the report], they included Flynn’s name from the beginning” because it was essential to understanding its significance, a former senior US official told The Post. “There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.”

They call “unmasking” a routine and legal tool officials use to make more sense of the communications they’re monitoring and say that the intelligence community gets thousands of unmasking requests a year.

It seems unlikely that the Trump administration, however, is constantly putting requests in to spy on Democrat officials so in the end, it is unlikely that this argument will hold up.