Did Justice Snoop on Congress?
Special Counsel John Durham did yeoman work unraveling the Russia collusion deceit, though some skullduggery may still be hidden. That includes whether the Department of Justice disregarded the separation of powers to snoop on the House Intelligence Committee.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Thursday sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray seeking documents related to subpoenas issued in November 2017 to Google. The subpoenas demanded that the tech giant hand over the private records of two Republican staffers working for then-House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes. News of these subpoenas broke in December, after Google followed its policy of alerting customers five years after law enforcement action against them.
Mr. Jordan wants answers about the suspicious timing and nature of the Google subpoenas. In November 2017, Mr. Nunes was probing the origins of the FBI’s probe of whether Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. Mr. Nunes had revealed that the Hillary Clinton campaign had funded the infamous Steele dossier, and he was gearing up to issue a memo revealing the FBI’s abuse of wiretaps against Trump associates. The DOJ and FBI resisted Mr. Nunes’s request for documents, turning them over only under threat of contempt citations.
Mr. Nunes issued his memo on the FBI abuse in early 2018. Adam Schiff, then the ranking Democrat on the Intel Committee, released a rival memo with false claims that he said exonerated the FBI. The media at the time bought the Schiff tale and attacked Mr. Nunes as a fabulist. Subsequent inspector general reports and the Durham findings vindicated Mr. Nunes, not that his critics have apologized.
If DOJ used its law enforcement tools to snoop on Mr. Nunes, that would be an abuse of power. One subpoena target was Kash Patel, who was senior counsel on the Intel Committee. The other unidentified target was reported by Just The News to be an investigator who helped draft the findings of FBI abuse.
In both cases, the subpoenas demanded account details, addresses, telephone records, duration and session times, and billing records. One question is whether subpoenas were also sent to companies other than Google.
A Justice investigation of Congress is highly sensitive and typically requires authorization at the highest levels. Justice also typically notifies Congressional leaders, which doesn’t seem to have happened here. No charges were brought against Mr. Patel or the other aide. Mr. Nunes told Just The News in December that “The FBI and DOJ spied on a presidential campaign, and when Congress began exposing what they were doing, they spied on us to find out what we knew and how we knew it.”
That’s a serious allegation, but the subpoenas are also a serious intrusion on the rights of Congress. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who wasn’t in office at the time, could help restore public trust by ensuring the FBI helps Mr. Jordan discover what happened and why.
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