Justice Department faces Senate investigation over alleged spying on congressional staffers
by Gabe Kaminsky, Investigative Reporter
November 09, 2023 12:55 PM
EXCLUSIVE — Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans are investigating allegations the Justice Department spied on congressional staffers while they probed the agency, including during its handling of the Trump-Russia inquiry, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Virginia-based whistleblower firm Empower Oversight said in a late October Freedom of Information Act request to the DOJ that its founder, Jason Foster, former chief investigative counsel to ex-Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), was notified on Oct. 19, 2023, that the agency in 2017 subpoenaed Google for records on Foster's telephone and email accounts, as well as those of other House and Senate staffers. Now, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Grassley are demanding the DOJ turn over a trove of documents on these allegations, which they wrote in a Monday letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demonstrate "executive branch overreach."
"We write to express deep concern regarding recent revelations that the Department of Justice engaged in a campaign of covert surveillance of the personal communications of attorneys advising congressional oversight committees," the senators wrote to Garland in the letter, first obtained by the Washington Examiner. "The decision by unelected government bureaucrats to investigate the elected congressional representatives and congressional staff trying to hold them accountable is a true attack on our democracy."
The Justice Department did not return a request for comment. The letter from the senators comes over a week after House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) launched a similar investigation, requesting information on spying allegations from the DOJ, Google parent company Alphabet, Apple, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate/justice-department-senate-investigation-alleged-spying-congressional-staffers
