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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.”
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.
Campuses cry, ‘Save Gaza!’ but say NOTHING when Hamas executes Palestinians
Since Hamas’ brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, pro-Palestine protests have erupted across the Western world. Two years in, these riotous events calling for the death of America and Israel, the fall of the West, and jihadi violence continue to rage.
But Mark Levin can’t figure something out: If these protesters are so concerned about the Palestinian people, why aren’t they upset about Hamas’ recent brutality against Palestinians?
Protesters are in the streets screaming about Israel starving Gazans — “a lie,” Levin says — but they don’t bat an eye when Hamas, just hours after releasing hostages as part of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire and peace deal, orchestrates mass public executions of Palestinians.
Graphic videos and eyewitness accounts show masked Hamas gunmen dragging blindfolded and bound Palestinian men, whom Hamas deemed dissenters, into public squares in Gaza City and executing them at close range with high-powered rifles. Since the ceasefire began on October 10, numerous Palestinians have been killed in similar executions, including beatings, hangings in streets, and purges of suspected spies or anti-Hamas militias.
Further, the Doghmush clan, one of Gaza’s largest and most powerful Palestinian families and a longstanding enemy of Hamas, was targeted. A gang of Hamas military men infiltrated the family’s estate disguised as medical staff and proceeded to slaughter numerous clan members.
“Very few people are saying anything about this. I mean, this is coming out of reports out of the Middle East. It’s coming out of reports out of Gaza,” Levin says.
He wonders: Where’s the outrage from the same protesters who flooded campuses over false claims of Israeli genocide — while Hamas now unleashes a documented “reign of terror” on its own people in the territory Israel just surrendered?
Now Netanyahu’s threat to continue military operations against Hamas makes sense. The recent executions and Hamas’ refusal to return deceased hostages points to what Levin has been saying about the terrorist regime from the get-go: You can’t negotiate with them.
He laments the partial Israel Defense Forces withdrawal to enable the hostage release, as that’s what allowed Hamas to regroup and terrorize Gaza with public executions.
Levin warns that Israel will now insist on permanent security zones: “They’re going to have a defense security area — whether the Arab countries and Muslim countries like it or not, whether we like it or not — to protect their country. And they’re going to insist on it. This is what Netanyahu has said. This is what they’re going to do.”
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