Glenn Greenwald just published a new article about this:
Trump DOJ Obtained Data on Schiff and Swalwell, Two Long-Time Champions of Domestic SpyingThe two California Democrats join the long list of politicians who enable spying on ordinary citizens, then angrily object when they themselves are targeted.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/trump-doj-obtained-data-on-schiffshortened version:
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The two House Democrats, among the most fanatical disseminators of baseless Russiagate conspiracies and long known to serve as anonymous sources of leaks to liberal media outlets, reacted with predictable outrage. “This baseless investigation, while now closed, is yet another example of Trump's corrupt weaponization of justice,” Schiff intoned on Thursday night. As difficult as it is, Swalwell, as he often does, found a way to be even more melodramatic than Schiff: “Like many of the world’s most despicable dictators, former President Trump showed an utter disdain for our democracy and the rule of law.”
Investigating possible crimes — such as leaking classified information — is the job of the Justice Department. To accomplish that, FBI agents and prosecutors often obtain personal communications records about their suspects. But invading the communications records of journalists, as both the Obama and Trump DOJ did, can create serious threats to press freedom and the possibility of abuse and retaliation. The same is true for invading the communications records of members of the legislative branch, particularly ones hostile to the president. An investigation is certainly warranted to determine the propriety of these subpoenas.
But like so many politicians before them, Schiff and Swalwell have zero credibility to object to this targeting. When it comes to ordinary Americans, both have been long-time champions of expanding domestic spying powers and blocking efforts at reform designed to curb abuses of the type they claim took place here.
From the start of the Trump administration, Schiff and Swalwell were among the lawmakers most shrilly depicting Trump as some sort of Nazi-like figure bent on fascistic control of the United States. Yet their actions were sharply at odds with that cable-friendly rhetoric, as they repeatedly voted to preserve and expand the military budget, war powers and spying authorities of the New Hitler.
Perhaps the most relevant example was a 2018 amendment introduced by then-Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), the long-time privacy advocate who had repeatedly sought to rein in the U.S. Government's domestic spying powers and impose safeguards as a way to curb abuses. Amash's amendment was part of a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the NSA to spy on the communications of American citizens without a warrant as long as it can claim that their target is a foreign nation and that they only “incidentally” listened in on the calls or read the emails of citizens.
That 2008 law was enacted with bipartisan support to retroactively legalize the clearly illegal Bush/Cheney program of warrantless domestic surveillance. That law also authorizes the FBI to search NSA-collected communications of Americans without a warrant for use in its criminal investigations.
Amash's 2018 amendment was designed to prevent those abuses and rein in the power of the Executive Branch to spy on Americans. Its key provision was that it “required federal law enforcement agents [including those with the DOJ/FBI] to get a warrant before searching NSA data for information on Americans.”
It appeared that Amash had secured enough GOP votes to ensure passage of his reform bill. Fifty-seven House Republicans — part of the anti-spying wing of that party — announced their intention to support Amash's bill. Had the 193-member House Democratic caucus delivered its votes for Amash's amendment, it would have passed, and the U.S. Government's spying powers could have finally been reined in, with meaningful safeguards imposed.
Instead, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced her opposition to Amash's amendment. She then convinced just enough of her caucus — fifty-five members — to join with the GOP majority to defeat Amash's bill. Among those who joined with Pelosi and the pro-spying wing of the GOP led by then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) were Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell. In other words, while they were basking in the adoration of MSNBC and CNN hosts for calling Trump a dictator, they were joining with Pelosi and the GOP Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, to ensure that no limits were imposed on Trump’s powers of domestic spying.
Had Schiff and Swalwell been concerned at all with the privacy rights of ordinary citizens, they would have joined with the majority of Democrats in supporting Amash's bill. They sided with the U.S. security state (and the Trump White House) against the rights of ordinary Americans. When reporting on this repellent act, I wrote under the headline: “The Same Democrats Who Denounce Donald Trump as a Lawless, Treasonous Authoritarian Just Voted to Give Him Vast Warrantless Spying Powers.”
So stunningly craven was this vote from Pelosi, Schiff and Swalwell that they were denounced even by the ACLU, which, during the Trump years, rarely criticized Democrats.
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Thus do we have Schiff and Swalwell joining the ranks of a shameful club: politicians — usually California Democrats — who cheer for and empower the spying state when they think it will be used only against ordinary Americans, but not important and upstanding figures such as themselves. They then become indignant when they learn that they themselves were targeted with the spying powers they enabled.
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It's equally if not more concerning that we're seeing another “Merkel Effect,” where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it's a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them.
And, needless to say, Feinstein, Schiff and Harman were all leading voices in maligning and demanding the prosecution of Snowden for blowing the whistle on the domestic spying abuses they supported against ordinary Americans.These political elites view revelations of illegal spying on ordinary Americans as a crime, but revelations of spying on themselves as a noble journalistic act that require immediate investigations and mass outrage.
There are few attributes more contemptible in a politician than placing themselves above the citizenry they are supposed to be serving, believing that they themselves should be immune and protected from the burdens they impose on ordinary Americans. That this DOJ investigation of Schiff and Swalwell was baseless or abusive may turn out to be correct: time will tell.
But few people have less credibility to express indignation over such spying abuses than these two House members. After playing such a vital role in ensuring that ordinary citizens are vulnerable to these vast and unrestrained surveillance systems, they now want everyone to denounce those same powers since they are the purported victims this time rather than the perpetrators.
This post was edited by cambovenzi on Jun 11 2021 10:54am