A whistleblower group is suing the Department of Justice for attempting to “secretly surveil” congressional staff overseeing the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation.
Increased oversight of whistleblowers and research The civil lawsuit was filed Tuesday. The Justice Department has repeatedly denied requests for records related to “non-contentious” surveillance.
The lawsuit seeks to compel the Justice Department to turn over records related to the alleged unconstitutional surveillance after five Freedom of Information Act requests for documents made between October 2023 and June 2024 were ignored.
“These records will demonstrate the extent to which the Department of Justice, beginning in 2016, engaged in covert surveillance of various congressional staffers (of both political parties) who were actively engaged in oversight of the Department of Justice pursuant to its constitutional authorities,” the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said.
“The surveillance is beyond question, as various third-party technology companies have warned current and former employees that the companies have received subpoenas seeking employee communications records and non-disclosure orders (NDOs) prohibiting them from notifying employees,” the complaint states.
Empower founder Jason Foster discovered in October that he was among the congressional staffers under scrutiny by the Justice Department while serving as chief investigative counsel to Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.
“Last fall, Google told me that the Department of Justice had secretly forced them to turn over my communications records in 2017,” Foster said. Post to XHe noted that a subpoena was issued on September 12 of that year seeking his personal cell phone and email communications.
At the time, Senator Grassley was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was in charge of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
Senators Grassley, Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have called on Attorney General Merrick Garland for an explanation. October 2023 Letter Regarding the alleged violation of the separation of powers.
“The Department of Justice must be held accountable for the illegal and unacceptable surveillance of legislative branches that was initiated because congressional staff were uncovering the deep state's lies about Russiagate and embarrassing powerful bureaucrats,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told The Washington Post.
“In five months we will have a president who respects the Constitution and its guarantee of separation of powers, but in the meantime, this lawsuit marks an important step in holding the corrupt accountable,” Lee said in a statement.
In his investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz also found FBI misconduct in warrants filed to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and in the dissemination of the now-infamous Steele dossier.
Foster confirmed that the Justice Department and FBI “also targeted the personal accounts of more than a dozen congressional lawyers from both political parties” who were investigating FBI misconduct, including abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Both federal law enforcement agencies subsequently imposed six-year non-disclosure orders on major tech companies, including Google, Apple and Verizon, that had received subpoenas for communications of congressional staffers.
Those NDOs were also put in place after former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer James Wolf was convicted of lying to the FBI about his communications with a then-BuzzFeed reporter about Page's contacts with the Russians.
Empower Oversight has already filed a separate civil lawsuit seeking disclosure of all Justice Department subpoenas issued to obtain private communications of congressional staffers.
According to Tuesday's complaint, those subpoenas potentially captured communications between then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and several of his senior aides, including Robert Hur, Edward O'Callaghan and Sarah Isgur, who later served as U.S. attorney for Maryland and special counsel in the Biden administration's classified documents investigation.
Horowitz's office Original review As to whether the Department of Justice's actions during the investigation were “based on improper considerations.”
A spokesperson for the Justice Department's OIG office told The Post on Tuesday that the investigation is “ongoing.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to The Washington Post's request for comment.
