Ben Weingarten writes for the Federalist about disturbing pieces of a recent government report.
Can you imagine the danger to our republic if the Executive Branch could secretly, for months on end, and without any clear and compelling justification, surveil the very people in Congress conducting oversight of those agencies?
That chilling constitutional nightmare transpired. And we’re only getting the details about the separation-of-powers-eviscerating, civil liberties-undermining, and transparency-imperiling activity seven years after it started.
The revelations come in a recently released Justice Department Inspector General report. Like much of this corrupt activity, the story begins with Russiagate. In the spring and summer of 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post published articles containing classified information concerning Trump and Russia.
Among the unauthorized disclosures to emerge was that a FISA warrant had been issued to surveil Trump’s foreign policy adviser Carter Page. The dubious warrants would be renewed four times. …
… Remarkably, even after modifying its Congressional Investigations Policy, according to the IG, it is not clear that illegal leaks are subject to the policy. The policy is located in a chapter of DOJ’s Justice Manual called “Protection of Government Integrity,” the first provision of which states that the chapter deals with crimes “including bribery of public officials and accepting a gratuity, election crimes, and other related offenses.” Unauthorized disclosures do not make the list.
So why couldn’t this exact episode play out again?
The IG concluded that though it could not find evidence of “retaliatory or political motivation” for the issuance of the subpoenas, efforts like these risk “chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” and at minimum create “the appearance of inappropriate interference” by that branch “in legitimate oversight activity.”
One need not think hard about how a dishonest or corrupt national security apparatus could use the predicate of an illegal leak to spy on political foes for nefarious ends.
