Barr names yet another very special prosecutor in the ongoing effort to make 'Obamagate' happen

Another day, another U.S. attorney retasked by William Barr to follow up on a nonexistent “crime.” This time, Barr has taken John Bash, the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Texas, and given him the task of checking out “unmasking” of people whose identity was concealed in intelligence documents. These claims that members of the Obama White House were inappropriately unmasking citizens who appeared in foreign intelligence have been part of the Republican narrative since the beginning of Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. There are only two real problems with this investigation: First, unmasking isn’t a crime. It happens all the time, and in the case of an investigation into cooperation between U.S. citizens and Russian diplomats, it was often critical that the name of the person involved be revealed. Second, the name most often brought up in connection with unmasking—that of former Trump National Security Advisor and recent beneficiary of Barr’s largess, Michael Flynn—was never masked in the first place.

At this point, Barr has sent so many U.S. attorneys scurrying after whatever bee is currently trapped in Trump’s hair-bonnet that it’s an open question as to whether any are left to deal with actual crimes.

Unmasking is one of those things that comes up again and again. They’re the allegations that caused Devin Nunes to leap from an Uber in transit and go skulking about the White House basement with a pair of sources that turned out to be pals of Michael Flynn. Nunes went on to make unmasking—and in particular Flynn’s unmasking—the centerpiece of the all-Republican report he hustled out before the 2018 election put Democrats in charge of the House.

Most recently, Lindsey Graham had revived the subject of unmasking with demands to know who was behind the reveal of Flynn’s name. But this move turned out to be about as well-planned and executed as everything else Graham has ever done, when it turned out that Flynn’s name wasn’t hidden in the first place.

But of course, there’s no level of fact-freeness that sufficient for Trump, or for the right-wing outlets that have continued to pump that unmasking handle as a means of generating more fake “Obamagate” headlines and fundraising appeals. So, as The Washington Post reports, Barr is now sending Bash in an effort that not even Barr seems to find all that exciting.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/28/1948238/-Barr-names-yet-another-very-special-prosecutor-in-the-ongoing-effort-to-make-Obamagate-happen?detail=emaildkre