The Justice Department secretly spied on two House members and 43 congressional staffers, including Kash Patel, then a staffer for the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee and now President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, as part of a leak investigation. The department obtained phone records without notifying the courts, according to a sweeping report released Tuesday by the agency’s inspector general.
"The probe began to investigate leaks to the media of classified information as part of the Trump-Russia probe being conducted by officials at the department," reports Just The News. "Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the Justice Department, in filings with the court, did not reference 'the fact that they related to requests for records of Members of Congress or congressional staffers.'"
Patel, who is poised to become the new director of the FBI if confirmed, previously sued former Trump Justice Department officials and FBI Director Christopher Wray, accusing them of violating his Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures when they tried to obtain Patel's personal records, Just the News previously reported.
Patel said he was completely unaware of the subpoena until December 2022, when Google notified him about it.
Another former staffer, Jason Foster, previously told Just the News that he confirmed that the government successfully asked a federal court to hide its spying on Congress for five consecutive years.
Foster is now the head of the Empower Oversight whistleblower center. In 2017 at the time of the secret surveillance, he was the chief investigative counsel for Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The seizure of his personal data occurred in 2017 while he worked for the Senate, and ordinarily under the original court order, Foster would have been notified a year later. But because the DOJ sought court approval ex parte to keep its surveillance secret, he wasn’t alerted until earlier this fall, six years after the initial subpoena.
The report does not name Patel or the two members of Congress, but sources confirm that Patel, along with Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), were targeted. The investigation also included efforts to obtain emails from journalists at CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
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"The report found that DOJ investigators issued a broad sweep based on who may have had access to the sensitive information that was leaked," explains CNN. "Seeking records based only on 'the close proximity in time between access to classified information and subsequent publication of the information… risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch,' the inspector general wrote."
That’s because such a move “exposes congressional officials to having their records reviewed by the Department solely for conducting Congress’ constitutional authorized oversight duties and creating, at a minimum, the appearance of inappropriate interference by the executive branch in legitimate oversight activity by the legislative branch,” the inspector general added.
The inspector general did not recommend charges against anyone in their review and did not find any indication that the career prosecutors assigned to the leak investigation were motivated by politics.
This story is developing.
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