KT McFarland: AG Barr showing he 'doesn't have a whole lot of confidence' in DOJ officials
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Former deputy national security adviser KT McFarland told “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday that Attorney General William Barr “doesn't have a whole lot of confidence” in his Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., given he has chosen three U.S. attorneys "to investigate the investigators.”
McFarland made the comment the morning after Barr asked U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas John Bash to review the practice of "unmasking" before and after the 2016 presidential election, a controversy that has picked up steam after the Justice Department moved to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Republican lawmakers have demanded more information about the extent of the practice after a previously clandestine list of Obama-era officials who sought to reveal what turned out to be the identity of Michael Flynn in intelligence reports was released earlier this month. The DOJ had moved to drop the Flynn case after internal memos were released raising serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to his late-2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}On Thursday, McFarland pointed out that Barr chose Bash and U.S. Attorney John Durham, who she noted is from Connecticut, “to investigate the investigators.”
She added that Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, was tapped by the Justice Department in February to review the Flynn case.
“What does that tell you? That the attorney general, he doesn't have a whole lot of confidence in his Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., to do the right thing,” McFarland said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday night that Durham, who has been reviewing the origins of the Russia investigation, was looking into "unmasking" but Barr determined certain aspects of the practice needed further review, and Bash has been assigned to do so.
McFarland also pointed out that she thought it “was a little weird” that “people whose names were on the unmasking requests, some of them said that they didn't know anything about it, that it wasn't them.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“Unmasking has to be done by the person who needs to know and it can't be done for a frivolous reason, it can't be done just because you're curious about it,” she explained.
McFarland then brought up Flynn’s call with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, which took place during the presidential transition period on Dec. 29, 2016.
She noted that one of the things she is “really looking for is, in the unmaskings, was that fateful Dec. 29 phone call, when General Flynn talked to the Russian ambassador, was that unmasked? If not, why not?”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“We know it was recorded, we know there’s a transcript of it and if it wasn't unmasked by the NSA [National Security Agency], who did the recording? The CIA, the FBI?” she asked.
“A lot of unanswered questions that I hope we’ll find the answer to soon.”
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Fox News’ Vandana Rambaran and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.