(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The Biden administration wielded the DOJ as a weapon to target its political opponents in Congress, repeatedly bypassing constitutional protections to obtain their phone records and other private communications, a new House report concluded.
The aggressive efforts to target Republican lawmakers are detailed in a 57-page interim staff report published Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee. The report also raises questions about whether top Biden DOJ officials approved or “blessed” subpoenas for the phone records.
The report cements longstanding accusations surrounding the Biden-era DOJ, some of which had already been raised by Republican lawmakers through a series of transcribed interviews, reports and congressional hearings.
First, the House Judiciary Committee noted that the DOJ began targeting GOP lawmakers through the FBI’s Arctic Frost probe and later through Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, both of which examined efforts to challenge the certification of the 2020 election.
The report suggests the DOJ’s targeting of Republican lawmakers was known to or potentially green-lit by officials at the highest levels of the department.
According to the report, officials in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section directed members of the Arctic Frost probe to alert the deputy attorney general “via urgent report” about efforts to subpoena the phone records of Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
The phone records of no fewer than 17 lawmakers were targeted through controversial subpoenas between April 2022 and May 2023. Separately, the text messages of at least 44 lawmakers were also obtained without first being processed through a privilege filter, according to the report.
The subpoenas allegedly violated the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, a provision that the House Judiciary Committee said is designed to shield lawmakers from compelled disclosure related to their legislative duties.
The report noted that the text messages were never assessed to determine which content was protected by the Constitution. Worse still, lawmakers were never informed of the subpoenas because they were obtained “ex parte.” This means that the proceedings occurred without the lawmakers being present or allowed to challenge the subpoenas, the report found.
Most infamously, the FBI seized the phone of Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., in August 2022, a day after federal agents raided Mar-a-Lago as part of an investigation into the dispute over classified documents involving President Donald Trump and the National Archives. The House Judiciary Committee has long said the FBI’s seizure and forensic examination of Perry’s phone raised separation-of-powers concerns.
Newly unearthed internal documents show that DOJ lawyers warned others that the subpoenas for lawmakers’ records could run afoul of the Constitution, but proceeded with them.
The House report says Smith’s team recognized that lawmakers “likely” had Speech or Debate protections but still issued subpoenas, with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s approval.
