(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Following last month’s news that the Justice Department seized the phone and email records of at least a dozen congressional oversight staffers looking into the Russiagate hoax back in 2017, one of the DOJ’s targets has now revealed that a U.S. judge allowed the department to keep its surveillance secret for five years.
Jason Foster, the head of the Empower Oversight whistleblower-protection group, told Just the News on Tuesday that DOJ lawyers asked a federal magistrate for five consecutive years to delay notifying him that his data had been subpoenaed in an apparent federal leaks investigation. Foster said he discovered this from documents provided by Google.
“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,” Just the News reported.
“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.”
Foster expressed concern that due to the DOJ’s actions, confidential whistleblowers may be chilled from coming forward in the future, fearing that they’ll be exposed by the deep state.
“That’s a huge concern beyond just the constitutional speech or debate privilege issues, and attorney client privilege issues. I mean, I was also an attorney representing the committee,” Foster reportedly said.
“But yeah, there area whistleblower issues as well. I mean, obviously, I had communications, you know, with lots of FBI whistleblowers, and other agencies, and sometimes the best protection for whistleblowers is anonymity.
The DOJ Inspector General and the House Judiciary Committee have both opened investigations into the matter.
In May, Headline USA reported that former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was also spied on due to his role in probing the FBI’s Russia-collusion hoax.
The reporting was based on statements made by Tucker Carlson, who said that the “head” of the House Intelligence Committee once told him that the National Security Agency was reading the congressman’s texts.
Carlson did not identify the specific member he was talking to, but the list of House Intelligence Committee chairs over the last decade is not long: Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio (2023-present); Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., (2019-2023); Nunes (2015-2019); and former Rep. Michael Rogers, R-Mich. (2011-2015).
Headline USA contacted each of these officials. All of them but Nunes—who also would have been in the NSA’s crosshairs for investigating the agency’s spying on Carlson—denied speaking about the NSA.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
