Cornyn: Flynn Biggest Thing 'Since Watergate' If Not for COVID-19

The revelations concerning the investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn would be the "biggest thing since Watergate" if the nation wasn't involved in fighting the COVID-19 crisis, Sen. John Cornyn said Friday. 

"First of all, you see a series of events occur from the time that President (Donald) Trump was elected designed to undermine his presidency and try to remove him from office, convict them of a crime," the Texas Republican said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "We've seen impeachments, criminal investigations, you name it. And now we find that a number of Obama era individuals have unmasked an American citizen whose name was collected during the course of the surveillance of foreign intelligence surveillance and then leaked to the press in order to undermine the president and in order to justify this special investigation. And this is a very serious matter."

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, one of the names of the people on the list of those who sought to reveal Flynn's name, told CNN Thursday that there was nothing wrong with asking for names, but it would be an issue if the name was leaked, but Cornyn disagreed. 

"It isn't okay to just unmask American citizens names collected as part of foreign intelligence surveillance willy-nilly," said Cornyn. "It has to be for a purpose and that purpose has to be a bona fide purpose to be able to understand the rest of the intelligence product that you're viewing. It is important to point out as well that it is illegal to leak classified information. So the question is, did they properly and legally unmask and then secondly, did they leak the information? I think this is going to be an area that U.S. Attorney (John) Durham and the justice department is going to want to look at very closely because this is very, very serious."

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