Trump DOJ spied on Democratic lawmakers
What happened
The Justice Department pledged to reform its surveillance procedures this week, after it was revealed that the department under former President Trump had secretly seized communications data from House Democrats, reporters, and even Trump’s own White House counsel. Prosecutors searching for the source of leaks about Trump associates and Russia in 2017 and 2018 used grand jury subpoenas to force Apple to hand over the metadata of at least 12 people associated with the House Intelligence Committee, The New York Times reported. They included Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, as well as their aides and family members—including one minor. A subsequent Times report revealed that the department in 2018 sought account data for then– White House counsel Don McGahn, who had angered Trump by resisting his entreaties to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. “What has happened here are fingerprints of a dictatorship, not a democracy,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The DOJ’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, announced an inquiry into the data sweeps, and House Democrats launched their own investigation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said former Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr should testify before Congress about the seizures. Both men insist they had no knowledge of the subpoenas targeting Schiff and Swalwell, a claim Pelosi called “beyond belief.” Attorney General Merrick Garland promised to “evaluate and strengthen” the department’s policies around obtaining records from legislators.
What the columnists said
Trump’s Justice Department looked bad when he was in office, said David Graham in TheAtlantic.com. It “now looks even worse.” Such targeting of federal lawmakers is alarming, and given that Schiff and Swalwell were prominent Trump critics, “the odor of revenge is especially strong.” Why else did the investigations continue after prosecutors found no evidence tying the Democratic legislators to the leaks? The whole affair bolsters the impression of a DOJ “weaponized for personal gain.”
When it comes to press freedom, President Biden is off to a shaky start, said the Houston Chronicle in an editorial. After the Obama administration spied on reporters and Trump declared war on them, it was heartening to hear candidate Biden talk about “the fourth estate’s role in preserving our democracy.” But his DOJ continued Trump-era leak investigations, seeking the email records of Times journalists. Garland says the department will no longer pursue such cases. If Biden truly believes in a free press, he will support legislation to bake that change into law.
“The rat-a-tat revelations raise more questions than they answer,” said Zachary Wolf in CNN.com. Why was the DOJ targeting “people Trump viewed as his enemies?” Were Schiff and Swalwell the focus or were they swept up in a probe aimed at others? Who ordered the investigations? What we’ve seen “points to alarming weaknesses in the backstops that are supposed to prevent abuse of the federal justice system”—and there’s surely more to come.