Jim Jordan Urges Big Tech to Hand Over Records of Unconstitutional DOJ Surveillance of Congress
Jose Nino
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On October 31, 2023, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, who is the chair of House Judiciary Committee, called on America Big Tech giants to hand over any records exposing the Justice Department’s attempt to surveil or spy on members of Congress or their staff members.
Jordan’s letters to the CEOs of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Apple, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, came a week after revelations went public that up to a dozen or more elected officials and congressional investigators received belated notifications about their personal email and phone records being seized by grand subpoena six years ago.
Jordan made the case that the intrusions into the privacy of the House and Senate investigators came as many individuals were investigating malfeasances by the DOJ and FBI connected to the fraudulent Russia collusion investigation and represented a clear violation of Congress’ right to carry out independent oversight of federal agencies and the separation of powers that the Constitution spells out.
“The Justice Department’s efforts to obtain the private communications of congressional staffers, including staffers conducting oversight of the Department, is wholly unacceptable and offends fundamental separation of powers principles as well as Congress’s constitutional authority to conduct oversight of the Department,” Jordan stated in the letters.
The letter to the Alphabet can be found here.
“This revelation also follows news that the Department issued subpoenas to obtain the private emails and records of congressional staffers on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who were conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. These revelations strongly suggest that the Justice Department weaponized its law-enforcement authority to spy on the entities seeking to hold it accountable,” he added.
According to a recent Just the News report, several current and former congressional oversight staff were made aware that the US Justice Department seized their phone and email records back in 2017 as part of leak investigations. These revelations propelled the DOJ’s internal watchdog to start an investigation.
The targeted staffers included individuals who worked for the Senate Judiciary and House Intelligence committees who were tasked with direct oversight responsibility for the FBI and Justice Department, which raised concerns that the legislative branch watchdogs were being monitored by those they keep tabs on in the executive branch.
One of the former Senate Judiciary Committee staffers whose records were seized, Jason Foster, informed Just the News he feared the spying on Congress was much more rampant
“What it looks like occurred is that there was this extremely broad dragnet of of searching for information on everyone in the executive branch, with the very, very thin justification that they wanted to see all the personal emails and communications logs for everyone who had had access to the particular information that leaked,” he said during an interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast.
The US government has gone wild under the Biden regime. There’s a clear disrespect for the rule of the law. However, such developments go beyond Biden. This is the product of a government that’s grown too large and unwieldy. It’s high time that our leaders start questioning the merits of big government and make a concerted effort to reduce the size of the state.
This will obviously take a thorough cleansing of the present ruling class. A tall order, indeed. But it has to be done if we want to preserve our great republic.
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