No kings? How about no coups! The power elite in D.C. has been exposed for its attempt to crush Trump and his allies. So where’s the outrage? New from RealClearPolitics.
By FRANK MIELE
In a sense, it’s old news. In December 2021, CNN reported that the House’s select 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 Committee was empaneled for the specific purpose of turning President Trump into a criminal for supposedly aiding and abetting the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the Capitol.
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 Adam Kinzinger of Minnesota – informed the FBI about the phone data in December 2023 when it was becoming apparent that former President Trump was the favorite to win the Republican nomination in 2024.
More revelatory than the size 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 shows that by September 2023, the agency had already “conducted preliminary … analysis” on the call data of several members of Congress, including Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn.
According to CNN, “the FBI, as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s January 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 brings up 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 January 6 Committee), or at the very least a rogue element of the executive branch targeting political enemies in the legislative branch.
As Sen. 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.”
There is that suggestion once more 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.
A few news outlets reported in the following days that Kash Patel had fired agents involved in the Arctic Frost investigation. In addition, there were scattered reports on Sen. 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, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Smith demanding a transcribed interview and documents and communications related to the special counsel’s 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.”
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 like Kinzinger, former Rep. Liz Cheney, and now-Sen. Adam Schiff to former FBI director Chris Wray and former Special Counsel 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. But 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 Democrat senators and congressmen didn’t do their job.
Now it’s time for Jordan, Grassley, and Patel to do theirs.
About Heartland Diary USA
Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,” “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.
