"Attorney General William Barr appointed a federal prosecutor to review so-called 'unmasking' requests that Obama administration officials submitted against Trump associates, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Kerri Kupec, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said on Fox News that Barr appointed John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, to conduct the review.

Bash will carry out the probe in coordination with U.S. attorneys John Durham and Jeff Jensen, who are looking into various aspects of the Trump-Russia investigation.

'The attorney general determined that certain aspects of unmasking needed to be reviewed separately as a support to John Durham's investigation,' Kupec told Fox News' Sean Hannity.

On May 13, Republican senators released a list of 39 Obama-era government officials who submitted requests for intelligence reports during the presidential transition period that identified Flynn, the incoming national security adviser."

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"As one of his last acts in office, Richard Grenell, the outgoing director of national intelligence, declassified a batch of Trump-Russia documents, including one that a senior U.S. intelligence official said is 'very significant' to the origins of the Russia probe.

"Grenell also declassified transcripts of December 2016 phone calls between Michael Flynn and former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Fox News reported Tuesday.

"A senior U.S. intelligence official confirmed the Fox News report to The Daily Caller News Foundation. ...

"The official told Fox News that the document related to the origins of the Russia probe is 'very significant in understanding how intelligence was manipulated to support launching the Russia investigation.'"

"Our governmental COVID-19 mitigation policy of broad societal lockdown focuses on containing the spread of the disease at all costs, instead of 'flattening the curve' and preventing hospital overcrowding. Although well-intentioned, the lockdown was imposed without consideration of its consequences beyond those directly from the pandemic. ...

"The lost economic output in the U.S. alone is estimated to be 5 percent of GDP, or $1.1 trillion for every month of the economic shutdown. This lost income results in lost lives as the stresses of unemployment and providing basic needs increase the incidence of suicide, alcohol or drug abuse, and stress-induced illnesses. These effects are particularly severe on the lower-income populace, as they are more likely to lose their jobs, and mortality rates are much higher for lower-income individuals.

"Statistically, every $10 million to $24 million lost in U.S. incomes results in one additional death. One portion of this effect is through unemployment, which leads to an average increase in mortality of at least 60 percent. That translates into 7,200 lives lost per month among the 36 million newly unemployed Americans, over 40 percent of whom are not expected to regain their jobs. In addition, many small business owners are near financial collapse, creating lost wealth that results in mortality increases of 50 percent. With an average estimate of one additional lost life per $17 million income loss, that would translate to 65,000 lives lost in the U.S. for each month because of the economic shutdown. ...

"Here are the examples of missed health care on which we base our calculations: Emergency stroke evaluations are down 40 percent. Of the 650,000 cancer patients receiving chemotherapy in the United States, an estimated half are missing their treatments. Of the 150,000 new cancer cases typically discovered each month in the U.S., most -- as elsewhere in the world -- are not being diagnosed, and two-thirds to three-fourths of routine cancer screenings are not happening because of shutdown policies and fear among the population. Nearly 85 percent fewer living-donor transplants are occurring now, compared to the same period last year. In addition, more than half of childhood vaccinations are not being performed, setting up the potential of a massive future health disaster."

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"[F]rom these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

"President Barack Obama's Treasury Department regularly surveilled retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn's financial records and transactions beginning in December 2015 and well into 2017, before, during and after when he served at the White House as President Donald Trump's National Security Director, a former senior Treasury Department official, and veteran of the intelligence community, told the Star Newspapers.

"'I started seeing things that were not correct, so I did my own little investigation, because I wanted to make sure what I was seeing was correct' she said. 'You never want to draw attention to something if there is not anything there.'

"The whistleblower said she only saw metadata, that is names and dates when the general's financial records were accessed. 'I never saw what they saw.'

"By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury. ...

"'It wasn't just him,' the whistleblower said. 'They were targeting other U.S. citizens, as well.' ...

"This surveillance program was run out of Treasury's Office of Intelligence Analysis, which was then under the leadership of S. Leslie Ireland. Ireland came to OIA in 2010 after a long tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency and a one-year stint as Obama's daily in-person intelligence briefer."

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"The infamous story of Joe Biden's effort to force the firing of Ukraine's chief prosecutor in 2016 has taken a new legal twist in Kiev, just as the former vice president is sewing up the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination in America.

"In Kiev late last month, District Court Judge S. V. Vovk ordered the country's law enforcement services to formally list the fired prosecutor, Victor Shokin, as the victim of an alleged crime by the former U.S. vice president, according to an official English translation of the ruling obtained by Just the News.

"The court had previously ordered the Prosecutor General's Office and the State Bureau of Investigations in February to investigate Shokin's claim that he was fired in spring 2016 under pressure from Biden because he was investigating Burisma Holdings, the natural gas company where Biden's son Hunter worked.

"The court ruled then that there was adequate evidence to investigate Shokin's claim that Biden's pressure on then-President Petro Poroshenko, including a threat to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, amounted to unlawful interference in Shokin's work as Ukraine's chief prosecutor."

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"A common theme that has emerged from the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation is bureau officials' use of media reports and leaks to advance aspects of the bureau's probe of the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.

"In at least five instances, FBI officials capitalized on the so-called news hooks -- also called news pegs, in journalistic jargon -- as justification to open up new areas of the investigation.

"James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok all took advantage of media reports to push the investigation forward. And in one case, Comey orchestrated a leak of his own to spur the appointment of a special counsel.

"Prominent media outlets played a key role in advancing the now-debunked theory that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Much of that media manipulation centered around the infamous Steele dossier, which the Clinton campaign and DNC funded."

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"As new details emerge about the Obama administration's broad spying-and-leaking campaign against the incoming Trump administration, reporters have a choice to make about whether to cover this story honestly, at long last. There is a brief window of time afforded the media to get the story right. They should take advantage of it. ...

"It was one thing to spin the Russia collusion hoax during a time of mass elite freakout. But now everyone knows it was false. The truth is an existential threat to journalists, which is why the more activist among them are scrambling to kill the story and paint it as a distraction. These reporters won book contracts, TV gigs, promotions, and political success by peddling the hoax. They truly can't be honest about it.

"But others who weren't so complicit have a shot here. There is no getting out of this easy, so if there are any reporters who care about their reputation, much less the truth, they should get on the side of truth now."

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"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is happy to play rank politics with the federal coronavirus response. Exhibit A is the absurd $3 trillion 'relief' bill she's set for floor vote on Friday.

"It's the first emergency bill written by one party with zero input from the other. Some Dems say it's just an 'opening bid,' but why waste time crafting 1,800 pages of legislation full of poison pills for the opposition?

"It seems Pelosi thinks virtue-signaling to her base is worth the trouble.

"The bill is packed with junk that has nothing to do with the pandemic or the economic chaos the response to it has created. It would, for example, end the cap on state and local tax deductions enacted in the 2017 tax reform, putting more money in the hands of the rich in high-tax states.

"It also has no-way-Republicans-will-agree provisions on abortion, immigration and other hot-button issues irrelevant to the crisis."

"The list released Wednesday by acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell of top Obama officials who asked to 'unmask' former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's name from NSA reporting is the latest bombshell in the story of how the Obama administration weaponized intelligence to undermine and destroy the incoming Trump administration.

"But it also suggests this conspiracy began earlier and was much broader than previously believed.

"By releasing this list, Grenell did a great service to his country to protect the principle of the peaceful transfer of power. But the intelligence community needs to release much more information to get to the bottom of this conspiracy. This should include information on the content of the NSA reports and which officials made unmasking requests of them.

"Intelligence officials also need to provide a broader list of all unmasking requests made by senior Obama officials during this time period because it is likely that other Trump campaign and transition officials also were targeted. ...

"The lists of requesters to unmask Flynn's name from intelligence reports after the 2016 election is not a smoking gun, but it does strongly suggest some coordinated effort by senior Obama officials to target Flynn and undermine the incoming Trump administration."

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