Exactly why, Jim Jordan wants Merrick Garland to explain, did the DOJ spy on Senate staffers? Specifically, the ones in the office of Charles Grassley’s Senate Judiciary Committee. Ones who were investigating FBI and Justice Department misconduct. This wasn’t an in house operation, either. They apparently “worked with big technology companies to surveil members of Congress and their staff.”
DOJ spied on Senate
The DOJ was nervous about an investigation that Iowa Senator Charles Grassley had going into their handling of Christopher Steele’s dirty dossier. Nervous enough to start monitoring phone calls. Even reading the personal emails of Grassley’s assistants.
They treated senate staffers like common criminals, simply to gather intelligence about the investigation into their own misdeeds. That’s called “weaponization.” Jordan also happens to head the subcommittee in charge of investigating that. Garland is terrified to open his mail these days.
“On October 19, 2023, Google notified the former Chief Investigative Counsel to then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley that the Justice Department had subpoenaed Google in 2017 for the staffer’s personal phone records and emails,” Jordan wrote.
DOJ didn’t just spy on congressional staffers conducting oversight on the agency during its Russian collusion hoax. DOJ also spied on a top Grassley staffer’s wife. https://t.co/46evlt6U4S
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 25, 2023
Coincidentally, that was when “Senator Grassley was conducting vigorous oversight of the Department’s handling of the so-called Steele dossier.” The DOJ did a lot more than that.
“Google’s notification to this staffer revealed the Justice Department likely also sought the personal records and communications of other congressional staffers — both Republicans and Democrats — who engaged in oversight of the Department during the same period.”
At least the DOJ was bipartisan for a change. Jordan wants to know if their work devices were also targeted. “Google’s notification further raises the question of whether the Justice Department also requested any official records or communications on these staffers’ government devices.”
Totally unacceptable
As Jordan reminded Merrick Garland, DOJ efforts “to obtain the private communications of congressional staffers, including staffers conducting oversight of the Department, is wholly unacceptable.”
Congress isn’t going to put up with that kind of conduct any longer. It “offends fundamental separation of powers principles as well as Congress’s constitutional authority to conduct oversight of the Justice Department.”
The DOJ and FBI haven’t been doing well this week. Another thing that Jordan is investigating also relates to Senator Grassley and his probes. On August 6, 2020, the FBI dropped in to give Senator Grassley and his colleague, Ron Johnson, an unsolicited “defensive briefing.”
Stuart Goldberg told us that the Hunter Biden case received “closer supervision” than most cases — and required high-level approval to bring charges.
Why not just treat Hunter like every other American?
What happened to equal treatment under the law?
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) November 7, 2023
Those are usually meant to fill in oversight committees on sensitive details of investigations which overlap with things that Congress is looking into. This one was nothing but a waste of time to the senators but did wonders for the FBI. Jordan insists that it was specifically calculated “to frustrate and obstruct congressional oversight into the Biden family’s overseas influence-peddling operation.”
Grassley and Johnson were digging into Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and money laundering. After Then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Nikki Floris and then-FBI Foreign Influence Task Force Section Chief Bradley Benavides stopped by, the senators didn’t learn anything new.
Instantly, all the media outlets were reporting leaked information fed to them by the DOJ that “provided the Democrats and liberal media the vehicle to spread their false narrative that our work advanced Russian disinformation.“
