If it’s ‘worse than Watergate,’ then why the media blackout?



In a sense, this is old news. In December 2021, CNN reported that the House’s January 6 committee had subpoenaed phone records of more than 100 people.

But that was mostly Trump officials, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. No surprise there. After all, the January 6 Select Committee was empaneled for the specific purpose of turning President Donald Trump into a criminal for supposedly aiding and abetting the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the Capitol.

It is well past time for the Republican Congress to fulfill its promise to hold accountable those who weaponized the federal government against Trump and his allies.

But when this story resurfaced earlier this month, there was something new, too. For one thing, the scope of the investigation was almost unbelievable — it turns out those subpoenaed phone records consisted of a staggering 30 million lines of phone data.

And when the select committee’s investigation went nowhere, one of the members — GOP malcontent and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — informed the FBI about the phone data in Dec. 2023 when it was becoming apparent that Trump was the favorite to win the Republican nomination in 2024.

Greater than Watergate

More revelatory than the numbers of the phone records hauled in by the J6 committee was the news that the FBI had gone after these same records — and possibly more — in an effort to target Trump and his conservative allies. Not only did the agency have its eyes on Trump, it also went after nine Republican members of Congress — eight senators and a stray congressman, in an obvious effort to sweep up accomplices in the coup that never was.

Whether the FBI obtained the same phone records as the J6 committee is unclear. Kinzinger’s tip may have been moot, because an FBI memo released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) shows that by September 2023, the agency had already “conducted preliminary … analysis” on the call data of several members of Congress, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).

According to CNN, “The FBI, as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation, used court orders in 2023 to obtain the phone records of nine GOP lawmakers.” These were not actual phone calls or text messages, but rather information about who called or texted whom and when.

Grassley posted the memo to his X account, with the message:

This document shows the Biden FBI spied on 8 of my Republican Senate colleagues during its Arctic Frost investigation into "election conspiracy." Arctic Frost later became Jack Smith's elector case against Trump.

He concluded, in all caps: “BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE.”

Which raises the question: Why did the story turn out to be a one-day wonder? Here we have the discovery of a partisan investigation seeking to uncover dirt on fellow members of Congress (if the records did indeed start with the J6 committee), or at the very least a rogue element of the executive branch targeting political enemies in the legislative branch.

As Johnson said:

They’re casting this net, this fishing expedition against members of the Senate and the House. There is no predicate. There’s no reason for this other than a fishing expedition, which, again, should outrage and shock every American.

Once again, a member of Congress implied that we are witness to a political scandal (one of many in the Biden administration) that is among the worst in our history. Yet when you do a Google search for stories related to phone toll records being subpoenaed by either the J6 committee or the FBI, virtually nothing comes up beyond Oct. 7, the day after Grassley released the memo.

Crickets …

A few news outlets reported in the following days that FBI Director Kash Patel had fired agents involved in the Arctic Frost investigation. In addition, scattered reports surfaced on Hagerty questioning why Verizon released his phone records without informing him.

Verizon told Fox News Digital:

Federal law requires companies like Verizon to respond to grand jury subpoenas. We received a valid subpoena and a court order to keep it confidential. We weren't told why the information was requested or what the investigation was about.

Grassley and Johnson followed up with their own letter to Verizon and three other telecommunication companies demanding to be supplied with the same data that was provided to the FBI or special counsel Jack Smith. In addition, the senators expressed their belief that the records should have been privileged because they concerned the official constitutional duties of certifying the 2020 presidential election.

It seems like a real story — one that deserves the full attention of the press — but where are the special investigation teams at the New York Times and the Washington Post? What have you heard about this story on CBS, NBC, and ABC newscasts? Very little if anything. Certainly nothing in comparison to the coverage provided to Watergate.

Most recently, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Smith demanding a transcribed interview and documents along with communications related to his investigation of Trump. Well and good, but that interview will be conducted in secret, as were the interviews of Smith’s subordinates — one of whom, according to Jordan, “invoked the Fifth Amendment approximately 75 times.”

RELATED: Exclusive: House Republican seeks criminal investigation into Jack Smith's alleged surveillance scheme

Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

Time for Congress to step up

It is well past time for the Republican Congress to fulfill its promise to hold accountable those who weaponized the federal government against Trump and his allies. Press releases and secret interviews won’t do the job. We need public televised hearings, with witnesses ranging from members of the J6 committee, including Kinzinger, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), and now-Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), to former FBI Director Christopher Wray and Jack Smith.

Would the legacy media networks cover it? Probably not, because as we all know by now, those outfits are still after Trump’s scalp, and they will only seek to discredit Jordan and the other congressional investigators who want to know the truth. That doesn’t mean Republicans should give up.

Watergate started as a one-day story about a botched break-in. But even without Woodward and Bernstein, the famous team of reporters from the Washington Post, the story would never have been kept quiet unless Senate Democrats and congressmen didn’t do their job.

Now it’s time for Jordan, Grassley, and Patel to do theirs.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

House GOP seeks criminal charges against ex-CIA chief over alleged Russiagate lies



The House Judiciary Committee officially referred former CIA Director John Brennan to the Department of Justice for allegedly lying to Congress about his involvement in the Russia collusion hoax.

Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) referred Brennan to the DOJ on Tuesday for allegedly making "false statements" during his transcribed testimony before the Judiciary Committee in 2023. During his testimony, Brennan made "numerous willfully and intentionally false statements," including that the CIA was not "involved at all" with the Steele dossier, according to Jordan.

'It indicates a pattern of Brennan's willingness to lie.'

"Congress cannot perform its oversight function if witnesses who appear before its committees do not provide truthful testimony," a letter from Jordan to Attorney General Pam Bondi reads. "Making false statements before Congress is a crime that undermines the integrity of the Committee's constitutional duty to conduct oversight."

In the letter, Jordan outlined every falsehood he claims Brennan stated during his 2023 testimony, testimony that Jordan said directly contradicted the Intelligence Community Assessment.

RELATED: 'Ultimate hypocrisy': Murkowski, now whining about Comey indictment, sang a different tune when Dems went after Trump

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In 2017, several intelligence agencies published a report alleging that Russia had meddled in America's elections to elect President Donald Trump to his first term in 2016. This report, which was later debunked, was based on the Steele dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the law firm Perkins Coie and other opposition research firms like Fusion GPS.

After the Trump administration declassified documents showing that the report's claims were apparently fabricated by former President Barack Obama's administration, Brennan's testimony was called into question.

Brennan initially claimed in May 2023 that the "CIA was not involved at all with the [Steele] dossier," a statement that contradicted the findings "jointly made by the Directors of CIA and FBI," according to Jordan's letter. Jordan also claimed that Brennan "overruled senior CIA officers" who had objections about including the dossier material in the report.

"Brennan's assertion that the CIA was not 'involved at all' with the Steele dossier cannot be reconciled with the facts," the letter reads. "As the newly declassified documents show, a CIA officer drafted the annex containing a summary of the dossier; Brennan made the ultimate decision, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, to include information from the dossier in the ICA."

RELATED: Released FBI docs reveal Comey allegedly used media mole to plant info at New York Times for Russian collusion investigation

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Brennan similarly testified that the CIA "very much opposed" including the Steele dossier in the report, despite declassified documents claiming he "refused to remove it" from the report regardless of its "many flaws."

Durin separate testimony in 2017, Brennan said the Steele dossier "was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment," despite contrary evidence found after the Trump administration declassified documents. Notably, this testimony was made beyond the five-year statute of limitations, but Jordan said that "it indicates a pattern of Brennan's willingness to lie to Congress about the Steele dossier."

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Scandal exposed: The FBI's Catholic witch hunt just got even uglier



On July 22, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) released a new interim staff report on former President Joe Biden's Catholic spy ring.

Thanks to FBI Director Kash Patel, some of the information is new. And when pieced together with what we already knew, the picture that emerges is one of an FBI that went off the rails. Christopher Wray, who led the FBI under Biden, bears much of the blame.

This was not a mistake. It was a well-planned effort to intimidate and harass practicing Catholics.

The FBI was apparently focused on “radical-traditionalist Catholics.” Who are these people? According to the FBI’s own internal review of this matter, “investigators found that many FBI employees could not even define the meaning of ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic’ when preparing, editing, or reviewing” the Richmond Field Office memorandum that authorized the probe.

In other words, the FBI decided that these Catholics were a problem, even though agents were unable to explain who they are. FBI agents were convinced that the so-called rad-trads were “linked” to "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists."

What made them think this way is still a mystery, but we know they found nothing. That’s because there is no record of very conservative Catholics linking up with violent thugs. Indeed, on this basis alone there was no reason to investigate them.

This didn’t stop some FBI operatives from categorizing “certain Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists.” They came to this absurd conclusion based on articles employees read. “How Extremist Gun Culture Is Trying to Co-opt the Rosary” is one of the gems they named as evidence of the nefarious agenda of “rad-trad” Catholics.

RELATED: The FBI was completely correct to keep an eye on Catholics

Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images Plus

If there is one Catholic group that the FBI thought was emblematic of very conservative Catholics, it is the Society of Saint Pius X. This was not a good choice — this group is not in full communion with the Catholic Church. This is a breakaway association of Catholics founded in 1970 who were upset with the reforms of Vatican II in the 1960s. They were once excommunicated, then reinstated, but are still one step removed from being an authentic part of the Catholic Church.

I have been saying all along that the FBI’s focus on SSPX and the “rad-trads” is a ruse. Quite frankly, this was a pretext to opening the door to a much wider investigation of practicing Catholics, most of whom tend to be more conservative than non-practicing Catholics.

The evidence is conclusive.

The latest report shows that the FBI proposed a probe of "mainline parishes." It says that “FBI employees believed without evidence that mainstream Catholic churches could serve as a pipeline to violent extremist behavior.” Without evidence! Also, “The FBI seems to have considered Catholic churches as a potential hot spot for radicalization and viewed investigating Catholic churches as an ‘opportunity.’” Exactly.

As an example of this mad search for wrongdoing, the FBI investigated Catholics who evinced “hostility toward abortion-rights advocates.” In other words, Catholic activists who exercised fidelity to Church teachings on abortion — they are called pro-life Catholics — were considered a domestic threat by the FBI. Similarly, those who espoused “Conservative family values/roles” were labeled “radical.”

This tells us all we need to know about the politicization of the FBI under Biden.

It also tells us something else: It was not dissident Catholics the FBI was concerned about. It was the loyal sons and daughters of the Church. How strange it is to note that at least some dissident Catholics, and some FBI agents, were both seeking to subvert the Catholic Church.

This may not have been coordinated, but the outcome is nonetheless disturbing.

RELATED: Christopher Wray must be prosecuted

MANDEL NGAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

It is not just the profile of Catholics whom the FBI was examining that was a problem — it was the scope of its investigations. It started in Richmond, then spread to Louisville, Milwaukee, and Portland. Its reach even extended overseas — the FBI’s London Office was involved. This is hardly surprising given that we already knew the FBI further proposed “to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of ‘threat mitigation.’” The goal was to have a “national application” of its investigatory measures.

This was not a mistake. It was a well-planned effort to intimidate and harass practicing Catholics. The Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government determined in the last Congress that “there was no legitimate basis for the memorandum to insert federal law enforcement into Catholic houses of worship.” That says it all.

Under Biden, the FBI was looking for dirt on Catholics, especially those who are pro-life and hold to traditional moral values. This was one of the most despicable violations of the civil liberties of innocent Americans conducted by the federal government in modern times. That it took place in an administration run by a “devout Catholic” makes it all the more outrageous.

We are thankful to Rep. Jim Jordan for all the good work that he, his committee, and his staff have done.

This essay was adapted from an article originally published by the Catholic League.

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