Obama administration National Security Adviser Susan Rice met behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday to discuss its Russian meddling probe.
Rice is one of three former Obama administration officials to meet with the committee this week, CNN reports. The committee has also met with Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
"Ambassador Rice met voluntarily with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today as part of the committee's bipartisan investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election," said Erin Pelton, a spokesperson for Rice. "Ambassador Rice appreciates the committee's efforts to examine Russia's efforts to interfere, which violated one of the core foundations of American democracy."
Rice has come under scrutiny after a Bloomberg report revealed that she had sought to "unmask" the identities of Trump campaign associates whose conversations were incidentally collected in raw intelligence reports.
She had previously been expected to also publicly testify before the House Intelligence Committee on the unmasking, but that testimony has been postponed.
Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, downplayed the unmasking concerns, however, in an interview with CNN.
"The unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes, and I'll wait to go through our full evaluation to see if there was anything improper that happened," he said. "But clearly there were individuals unmasked. Some of that became public which it's not supposed to, and our business is to understand that, and explain it."