The surveillance was carried out during their investigation into "Crossfire Hurricane," the DoJ's internal codename for the probe into alleged Russian collusion.
Documents have surfaced that substantiate claims of the DoJ spying on Foster and Patel's phone calls and emails in 2017, in what is being termed an illegal "fishing expedition." Tejpal Chawla, a federal prosecutor and known contributor to Democrat campaigns, has been identified as a key player in the surveillance of the Republican attorneys.
October 31, 2023
In 2017, Congressional staffers initiated an investigation into the US Attorney’s office regarding its "Crossfire Hurricane" probe. The investigation was centered around allegations that President Trump colluded with Russia to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
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Chawla, serving as an Assistant US Attorney in the Washington DC US Attorney’s office, subsequently issued subpoenas for the phone records of the lawyers working for the Senate and House. Recently, a court seal hiding the seven-year-old subpoenas of the congressional lawyers expired, and the targets of the Justice Department’s illegal surveillance scandal were notified by tech giants that they had been under surveillance.
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Foster, the former chief investigative counsel to then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley, was informed by Google last week that his phone calls had been monitored while he served as a congressional watchdog. According to a 2017 subpoena Foster received from Google, the DoJ had obtained records for his Google Voice telephone number between Dec. 1, 2016, and May 1, 2017.
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The department also accessed the phone records of Foster’s wife and potentially monitored the phone he used for Senate business. Foster, who now heads the whistleblower organization Empower Oversight, has filed a Freedom of Information request demanding the US Attorney’s Office disclose records surrounding its surveillance of congressional staff.
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Foster told the Daily Mail, “This was just a fishing expedition to gather intel on their overseers in Congress. We were their primary oversight committee and we were asking the very pointed and difficult questions that they didn’t want to answer.”
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Foster warns that several other congressional staffers and attorneys were also spied on by the DoJ while investigating Crossfire Hurricane. He questioned, “You have to ask, how far does this go? We’re only just finding out about the Senate. We knew earlier about House Intel. Who else have they been monitoring? And for how long?”
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The Daily Mail obtained a copy of the surveillance subpoena and identified Chawla’s signature on the largely redacted document. The publication notes, “Enough was visible for DailyMail.com to match it Chawla’s signature on other court documents.”
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In December 2022, Patel, the former House Intelligence Committee chief investigative counsel, was informed by Google that the Justice Department had secretly monitored his private call logs during his probe of the department as early as November 2017.
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On Sept. 14, Patel filed a federal lawsuit against the DOJ for illegally spying. The lawsuit states, “DOJ sought the subpoena for Mr. Patel’s private accounts without a legitimate basis in a chilling attempt to surveil the person leading the Legislative Branch’s investigation into the Department of Justice’s conduct during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
In 2018, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to subpoena the personal records of the staff of the House Intelligence Committee during a closed-door meeting, Patel’s lawsuit notes. However, according to copies of the subpoenas forwarded by Google, the DoJ had already been surveilling the metadata from their phones and texts long before Rosenstein’s threats.
Former House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes had already exposed the illegality of Crossfire Hurricane when he released a report in Feb. 2018, claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigations “relied on politically motivated sources” to obtain surveillance warrants to monitor Trump campaign staffer Carter Page.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is currently investigating the DoJ’s sweeping effort to spy on congressional staff and journalists. The U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General is “reviewing the DOJ’s use of subpoenas and other legal authorities to obtain communication records of Members of Congress and affiliated persons, and the news media in connection with recent investigations of alleged unauthorized disclosures of information to the media,” according to its website.
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