The unmasking scandal has suctioned in the name of President Obama's "mind meld," deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, according to a report from Sara A. Carter of Circa, citing congressional sources.

Rhodes, along with Susan Rice, Samantha Power, John Brennan, and other Obama loyalists, has been accused of "unmasking" innocent Americans whose names were caught up in intelligence dragnets directed at foreign targets in the House Intelligence Committee investigation.  The tool is so strong as a surveillance instrument that U.S. intelligence agencies are legally bound to keep names of Americans "masked" to avoid spying on them.

If an official reading an intelligence report wants to unmask a name, it has to be for grave national security purposes.  Team Obama found hundreds and hundreds of grave national security purposes as they unmasked hundreds of Americans, significantly higher in the final year of Obama's term as president, according to Carter, who wrote:

According to the documents reviewed by Circa, government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept meta-data, which include telephone numbers and email addresses. The activity was a 27.5 percent increase over the prior year and more than triple the 9,500 such searches that occurred in 2013, the first year such data was kept. In 2016 the administration also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a massive spike from the 198 names searched in 2013, according to the data.

As Breitbart News points out some of these unmaskings were followed by leaks to the press.

This raises questions about whether Team Obama used U.S. intelligence resources, paid for by all Americans for their own national security, for shady partisan political purposes instead.

So now Rhodes, who rose to the title of deputy national security adviser, is being called a "person of interest" in the unmasking investigation of the House Intelligence Committee, along with his close Twitter friends Rice, Power, and other Obama officials.  We'd like to see Vice President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Colin Kahl, come up, too.  Rhodes and Kahl are close on Twitter.

Would Rhodes be the sort to do it?  My vote is yes.

A look at who Rhodes is gets the ball rolling.  He's a 30-something ne'er-do-well with a creative writing major who never amounted to much before got his big break through his political associations with President Obama.  An unsuccessful novelist, he lived in the shadow of his successful older brother, David Rhodes, who was president of CBS News.  Apparently there was enough of a political advantage in that for Obama to hire Rhodes first as a speechwriter and then as a strategic communications director at the White House, entitling him deputy national security adviser, a designation well above what his underachievement merited.

Complicating things, he was reportedly unable to get an interim security clearance in 2008, even with the bar lowered as it was in the Obama years.  Why that happened is unclear, but it's noteworthy that he was the only one of more than 187 who otherwise got them.  Suffice it to say, if he couldn't qualify, it's likely he thumbs his nose at either the law or the flag in some way.

With that much handed to him cheaply, and things in his background so bad he apparently wasn't allowed to access classified reports, it would be pretty easy to thumb one's nose at intelligence rules and do what he darn well pleased.

Rhodes is a serial liar, something derived from his past as a spin doctor and creator of "narratives."  Much of his Obama career has been centered on dishonest acts.

He's an author of the infamous Benghazi talking points, which sought to cover up the al-Qaeda-planned assassination of a U.S. ambassador by claiming that the killing was nothing but a crowd of enraged film critics who got out of hand.  His buddy Susan Rice went and delivered the talking points, over and over again, on television as the 2012 election approached and the administration sought to claim that President Obama had al-Qaeda "on the run."

He's also the architect of the Iran deal, the outrageous giveaway to the mullahs, including a $400-million payoff, in exchange for Iran's supposed termination of its illegal nuclear program, which hasn't happened.  Rhodes famously told a reporter after that fiasco that he had created a media "echo chamber" to fool the American people, whom he expressed nothing but contempt for.

He's also the author of the great giveaway to communist Cuba, free diplomatic relations and trade goodies in exchange for...nothing.  Cuba's Ladies in White and other dissidents endured new waves of beatings and assaults as a result of the newly moneyed Castro regime, and worse still, Venezuela became Hell on Earth as Cuban agents pulled puppet strings with their newfound power and cash that came with the U.S. opening.  Rhodes attended Castro's funeral for purposes unknown.

Besides being a congenital liar, Rhodes is also a whiner.

Late last year, a Beltway source told us that Rhodes was asked about why his holdover buddies and pals in the Deep State were going so far out of their way to trash President Trump's appointees before they had even taken office.  Rhodes leaned back and confidently told our source that it wasn't about principle or merit; rather, "they did it to us first."  So no matter how wrong they may be, Rhodes and his little friends were slapping back harder, as if Trump had any connection to Republicans and their acts under President Bush.

Here's another instance of whining, from a recent tweet:

Also the problem of having a compromised POTUS demand that the AG of the United States pursue investigations of his political opponents https://t.co/mDgfMN2xSt

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 1, 2017

Also the problem of having a compromised POTUS demand that the AG of the United States pursue investigations of his political opponents https://t.co/mDgfMN2xSt

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 1, 2017

So there's never anything untoward that he ever did – it's just a compromised president looking to prosecute political opponents to deflect attention.  There never was anything wrong with his illegal unmaskings of innocent citizens and likely leaks to the press; that was merely his job as Obama wanted it.  All there is is questioning of the president's motives.

I think that adds up to how Rhodes will fight if he finds himself in the dock for these illegal unmaskings.  He will hold no scruples about whether he tells the truth in spinning his "narrative," for one.  He will justify his own acts by saying "everybody did it."  And he will question the motives of anyone who makes a move to punish him for his misdeeds.

It might be enough to win, because it's always worked for him up until now.  But it should be noted that he's an ideal fall guy for these nonstop instances of lawlessness from Team Obama.  Someone as well known as Rice would be hard to prosecute, given that she claims a mantle of respectability now as former national security adviser (when was the last time we saw one of those punished? Sandy Berger?), and she would also be able to play the race card.  Samantha Power would do the same, playing the feminist card plus the sweet little human rights defender she's made her persona as well.  But Rhodes, known for his arrogance and insignificance, might have a harder time of it.  While he will fight like a rat with every tool in his "narrative" box, he might not be as shielded by titles and respectability as Power and Rice.  He's still a sniveling spin doctor who thumbs his nose at the law and despises the public.  He may well find himself in deep trouble now that the investigation is rolling forward.