Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has taken his fight with Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice to another level. On Dec. 19, Jordan subpoenaed Garland in order to get access to documents and information that proves the Department of Justice surveilled members of Congress or their employees through communications from Google during the Trump administration.
Rep. Jim Jordan Subpoenas Merrick Garland
https://t.co/cOHZ4aqpfr— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 19, 2023
In a letter to Garland, Jordan wrote, “If the Department’s representation is accurate, it indicates that the Executive Branch used its immense law-enforcement authority to gather and search the private communications of multiple Legislative Branch employees who were conducting Constitutional oversight of the Department’s investigative actions—actions that were later found to be unlawful.”
The DOJ, in 2017, subpoenaed Google to hand over private communications from Jason Foster, a chief investigative counsel for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) while Grassley chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee.
To prevent the 2017 subpoena from getting released, the DOJ reportedly secured court orders stopping Google from letting Foster and some other affected staffers know they were being spied on.
It was not until two months ago that Foster was notified of the subpoena by Google. In response, Jordan demanded more information from Garland about the subpoena from 2017 and when Garland failed to cooperate, a subpoena was the Iowa senator’s next move.
“Because the Department has not complied in full with our requests, we cannot independently determine whether the Department sought to alleviate the heightened separation-of-powers sensitivities involved or whether the Department first sought the information through other means before resorting to legal process,” the letter stated.
The letter also said the Justice Department sought the communications as part of an investigation into disclosures related to warrants on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The applications for the FISA warrants were, however, plagued with significant accuracies, according to a report by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Garland was given till Jan. 19 to comply with Jordan’s subpoena.
