Anonymous ID: f48062 May 20, 2020, 3:48 p.m. No.9257158   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>7359

>>9257119

NPR DECIDES IT MUST FACT CHECK TRUMP ON WHO

 

Fact-checking And Assessing Trump's Letter Of Rebuke To WHO

 

As the world seeks to join together to bring the novel coronavirus under control, President Donald Trump has sent a letter to the World Health Organization threatening that the U.S. will halt all funding and consider leaving the agency, pending an assessment of its response to COVID-19.

 

The timing of the letter added to its shock value: Trump sent out a Tweet at 10:55 p.m. Monday, in the midst of WHO's annual assembly, announcing that he'd sent the letter. The Tweet included the letter's full text and stated that his allegations of incompetence on the part of WHO were "self-explanatory."

 

WHO responded cautiously: "We have of course received the letter, and we are looking into it," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, said at at a press conference May 20. Pressed by NPR on what exactly the Trump administration is asking for in terms of changes at the WHO to keep the US from leaving the organization, Michael Ryan, director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said, "I think you might want to point that question to them."

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/05/20/858911395/fact-checking-and-assessing-trumps-letter-of-rebuke-to-who

Anonymous ID: f48062 May 20, 2020, 4:12 p.m. No.9257420   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>7457

TEXT FTPM Q PDF

 

May 19, 2020

VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION

Ambassador Richard Grenell

Acting Director

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Dear Ambassador Grenell:

On May 13, 2020, you provided us with declassified information related to the

“unmasking” of Lt. General Michael Flynn, and we very much appreciate your continued

commitment to transparency.1

We write now both to reiterate our request for the declassification

of additional information related to the unmasking of Americans around the time of the 2016

election, but also to expand the scope of our request to include information as early as January

  1. Based on our investigation and recent press reports, we are increasingly concerned that

the surveillance of U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump campaign began earlier than the

opening of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation in late July 2016.2

As we explained in our May 12, 2020, letter to you, one of the most significant

unanswered questions about what occurred during the 2016 election is how many Americans

were “unmasked,” at whose request, and for what purpose.3

It has become evident that the FBI,

and possibly members of the U.S. Intelligence Community, were focused on U.S. persons

affiliated with the Trump campaign in early 2016, if not even earlier.4

One example is that, in

April 2016, FBI headquarters directed its New York Field Office to open a counterintelligence

investigation of Carter Page, which on August 10, 2016, became part of the Crossfire Hurricane

investigation.5

 

1 Letter from Richard A. Grenell, Acting Director, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to Chairman

Charles E. Grassley and Chairman Ron Johnson, May 13, 2020.

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05-

13%20ODNI%20to%20CEG%20RHJ%20%28Unmasking%29.pdf.

2

See, e.g., Andrew McCarthy, Unmasking? The Real Story Is When Flynn Was Not Masked in the First Place, Nat’l

Review, May 16, 2020, https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/michael-flynn-unmasking-real-story-is-when-he-

was-not-masked-in-the-first-place/.

3 Ron Johnson, We need answers to questions mainstream media won’t ask about Democrats, The Hill, Oct. 10,

2019, https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/465241-we-need-answers-to-questions-mainstream-media-

wont-ask-about; Letter from Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Feinstein, Senator Graham, Senator Whitehouse

to Director Coats (May 27, 2017); Letter from Chairman Grassley to Attorney General Barr and Acting Director

Grenell (May 12, 2020).

4 McCarthy, supra note 1 (alleging that “several strands of the Trump-Russian probe … trace back to 2015”).

5 U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of Inspector Gen., Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s

Crossfire Hurricane Investigation 62-63 (Dec. 2019), https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf.