As public figures reeled from the news that the Trump Justice Department had secretly the subpoenaed communications data of two members of Congress along with staffers and family members — including a minor — of each member, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on Friday that former Attorney Generals Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions must testify about the situation. Schumer and Durbin indicated that if Barr and Sessions don’t willingly testify, then they should expect subpoenas.
Apparently, the secret subpoenas of the Democratic communications data were connected to efforts to find the sources of leaks of government information. The targeted members of Congress included Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), both of whom, as the current chair and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, have figured prominently in efforts to hold Trump accountable for his corruption. Schiff became the intelligence committee chair in 2019 after Democrats won the House, but before that, he was the top Democrat on the panel.
Schumer and Durbin described the secret subpoenas as “a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers.” They also said as follows:
‘The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata of House Intelligence Committee Members and staff and their families, including a minor, is shocking. This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress.’
On Thursday, Schiff himself noted that Trump appeared to have allies in his anti-democratic antics at the Department of Justice. As the Congressman put it:
‘President Trump repeatedly and flagrantly demanded that the Department of Justice carry out his political will, and tried to use the Department as a cudgel against his political opponents and members of the media. It is increasingly apparent that those demands did not fall on deaf ears. The politicization of the Department and the attacks on the rule of law are among the most dangerous assaults on our democracy carried out by the former President.’
Notably, Trump has frequently falsely claimed that the Obama administration “spied” on his campaign. In reality, authorities conducted judicially supervised surveillance of an ex-Trump aide once that individual, Carter Page, no longer worked for Trump. As it turns out, however, the Trump team itself conducted what could seemingly be reasonably described as spying targeting Trump’s political opponents.
