Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz took the side of Democrats on Friday, criticizing the Trump-era Justice Department over seizures of communications records of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee who raised concerns about the “politicization” of the agency.
The staunch Trump ally emerged as one of the few Republicans to speak out after the New York Times reported on Thursday the Justice Department subpoenaed Apple in 2017 and 2018 for the data belonging to California Rep. Adam Schiff, then-ranking member of the committee, as well as panel staff and family members amid a hunt for the sources of leaks about Trump associates and their ties to Russia.
“DOJ has a very nasty tendency to target its critics, Republican and Democrat,” Gaetz said in a statement reported by Politico.
“The Schiff story reminded me of the DOJ’s threats to use criminal process against House staff exposing their misdeeds,” Gaetz said. “I stand against all of it, no matter how much I personally dislike Schiff.”
WATCHDOG WILL INVESTIGATE TRUMP DOJ LEAK SUBPOENAS AGAINST CONGRESS AND REPORTERS
Gaetz, who himself has alleged a former Justice Department prosecutor is extorting him in connection with a federal sex trafficking investigation, also tweeted out a news story from 2018 reporting then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein planned to ask the House’s general counsel to investigate committee staff.
Fox News also reported at the time that emails showed Rosenstein threatened to subpoena communications of members and staffers of the then-Republican-led Intelligence Committee. But a DOJ official told the news outlet Rosenstein “never threatened anyone in the room with a criminal investigation,” and the FBI also disputed the characterization of a meeting described in the communications.
To all those “shocked” and “horrified” that Rod Rosenstein might spy on Schiff…
He was making these threats to BOTH sides, including congressional staff.
They don’t treat their critics well at the DOJ. https://t.co/iLWS6nVuX6
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) June 11, 2021
“To all those ‘shocked’ and ‘horrified’ that Rod Rosenstein might spy on Schiff … He was making these threats to BOTH sides, including congressional staff. They don’t treat their critics well at the DOJ,” Gaetz wrote on Friday.
Schiff, who became a face of Democrats’ inquiries into President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election and Ukraine-related impeachment in 2019, said on Thursday that Attorney General Merrick Garland needs to “clean house” at the Justice Department following the subpoena news.
“We’re obviously deeply suspicious of what the Justice Department was doing,” Schiff told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday. “More than that, this looks like a patent abuse of the department — yet another example of the president politicizing, using the DOJ as a cudgel to go after his enemies.”
A mix of congressional Republicans and former Trump administration officials, including Trump himself, have accused Schiff of being a leak source, though he and his team denied the allegations.
The Justice Department has not publicly commented on the subpoenas. Neither Schiff nor the report from the New York Times on the seizures said whether prosecutors took similar measures to obtain the communications of Republicans on the House committee.
The office of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced on Friday that it would investigate the agency’s reported use of subpoenas on Schiff and others, including journalists. Rep. Eric Swalwell, another member of the intelligence panel, told CNN he was also a target of these seizures.
Democrats have called for Jeff Sessions and William Barr, both attorneys general during the Trump administration, to testify before Congress about the revelations.
Barr told Politico he was “not aware of any congressman’s records being sought in a leak case” while leading the Justice Department.
“I never discussed the leak cases with Trump,” Barr said. “He didn’t really ask me any of the specifics.”
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Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, responded to the news of a watchdog investigation by saying, “Both classified leaks and abuses of power are serious offenses.”
“We know that the Justice Department is capable of abusing its power, as it did when it secretly spied on and ran intelligence operations against the Trump campaign,” he said in a statement. “We do not know whether the effort to investigate such leaks was another example of an abuse of power by the Justice Department.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Gaetz’s office for further comment but did not immediately receive a response.
