Staff Reports
In a stunning revelation, the Justice Department has been caught red-handed conducting surveillance on Members of Congress and their staff without so much as a nod to the judicial branch. An investigation by the agency’s inspector general uncovered that, during a leak probe related to the Trump-Russia saga, the DOJ spied on two congressional members and a whopping 43 staffers. Among the unsuspecting targets was none other than Kash Patel, a potential future FBI Director and former staffer for the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee.
As the Democrats like to say, this was all about “transparency” and “justice,” yet here we have a glaring case of the opposite. The inspector general, Michael Horowitz, emphatically noted that the DOJ’s court filings conveniently omitted any mention of their snooping on congressional officials. This sounds like a twisted game of operatives playing hide and seek, except it’s Congress they’re trying to avoid. One has to wonder whether this surveillance was more about protecting national security or about piecing together a politically motivated puzzle against those standing in the way of the left’s agenda.
IG FINDS DOJ SPIED ON KASH PATEL! @damonroberts shares a report that the Department of Justice spied on Congressional staffers without telling the courts! “The government asked a federal court to hide its spying on Congress.” @rickdelgadorad @lfs6b pic.twitter.com/Sl2FXnzizZ
— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) December 11, 2024
Patel, who is set to ascend to the role of FBI Director if confirmed, had a rude awakening when he discovered the DOJ had been fishing for his personal records. It appears that ignorance is bliss, because the poor guy didn’t even know about the subpoena until Google decided to rain on his parade in December 2022. In an era where tech companies usually sneakily track everything under the sun, one might think they would at least let their users know about government requests—oh wait, that only applies to the average Joe, not potential political appointees.
Of course, this isn’t the first time former congressional staffers have raised the alarm over government overreach. Jason Foster, who now leads the Empower Oversight whistleblower center, confirmed that the DOJ managed to convince a federal court to keep its spying antics under wraps for an astonishing five years. Considering the lengths the DOJ went to in order to maintain its secrecy, one can’t help but chuckle at the irony of a government agency supposedly out to protect the Constitution from “foreign” threats while trampling the rights of its own citizens in the process.
In what could only be described as a bureaucratic farce, Foster’s personal data was seized back in 2017, and he was kept in the dark until the fall of this year. This points to a systemic problem of transgressing individual rights while simultaneously declaring themselves the guardians of justice. Ordinary citizens would undoubtedly find themselves in hot water if they attempted to hide this sort of behavior. While this debacle unfolds, the American people are left to scratch their heads and wonder how much more of this nonsense can fit under the guise of “national security.”
