One of the cornerstones of this supposed scandal was the fact that federal law enforcement agencies were monitoring telephone contacts between representatives of Russia's government and people working for Trump's campaign. As part of that process, certain senior members of the Obama administration inquired whom on the campaign was speaking to Russian officials.
This is known as "unmasking." For instance, evidence shows that Russian X from the embassy is speaking with various Americans associated with Trump's campaign. The senior administration officials asked that the Americans be "unmasked" so they knew their identities. (One of those was Michael Flynn, who later was briefly Trump's National Security Advisor and who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts.)
This is standard operating procedure whenever you have Americans dealing closely with intelligence operatives for a hostile nation with whom the United States has an adversarial relationship. That's because possible crimes can be revealed.
But Trump tried to make this unmasking like it was the crime of the century. Some time ago, he even bullied the Justice Department into opening an investigation.
On the campaign trail, particularly recently, he has hyped this as the greatest scandal in American history that's just about to break wide open any day now.
As if. Yesterday, the investigation quietly folded, having found no evidence of wrongdoing or that laws were broken. Everything was so by the book that they didn't even issue a report (details here).
In short, it was the scandal that never was.
Don't expect Trump to stop talking about this. When facts don't support the narrative, he'll just make things up and lie through his teeth.
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IMPORTANT!
Voter registration closes today in Wisconsin. If you live in the Badger State and are not yet registered, please register online right now. Click here to do that. Please drop everything and do this immediately.
Residents in some other states can also register online using the same link above because you still have a little more time. Registration has already closed in some states, however.
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