We already know the DOJ had gone rogue in the Trump years — but they were STILL trying to hide what they were up to well into the Biden years.
Jason 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.
Foster on Tuesday told Just the News that lawyers for Google have now provided him documents showing that DOJ asked a federal magistrate for five consecutive years to delay notifying him that his data had been subpoenaed in an apparent federal leaks investigation.
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. Ex parte actions are motions, hearings or orders granted on the request of and for the benefit of one party only, without notice to the other party, in this case, Foster.
This is an exception to the basic rule of court procedure that both parties must be present at any argument before a judge. — JustTheNews
The executive branch being out of control is nothing new.
There’s a long litany of abuses in the Obama years… and every reason to believe Joe Biden has been using his appointees the same way. The J6 prosecutions and the disproportionate targeting of MAGA as likely ‘domestic terrorists’ come to mind.
Of course, we know about Crossfire Hurricane. But there was also the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. Brennan’s CIA hacking into Senate computers. We know about the bogus public statements by the ‘Intelligence Community’ about topics like Hunter’s laptop.
We’re now finding out it went a lot deeper than that.
The DOJ was spying on the very same people who are Constitutionally charged with the responsibility of oversight of the DOJ.
In other words, they misused their power to spy on their bosses so they could stay one step ahead of their oversight inquiries. Is it any WONDER they were so smugly confident they could get away with any rogue operation they wanted to pull off?
Kash Patel is one of at least a dozen members of Congress (from both parties!) alerted LONG after the fact that their personal information has been compromised.
Since then we’ve seen this administration casually ignore the limitations to their power — seizing journalists’ phones (and leaking those contents to an opponent in a legal case!), routinely piercing legal or executive privilege… even seizing the phones of members of Congress.
Should it really surprise anyone if they are gaming the system today in the same way they abused FOIA then?
Cross-posted with Clash Daily
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