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Adam Schiff Subpoenas Phone Records of His Political Rivals
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
There’s a lot of attention being paid to this impeachment theater, but why isn’t there more outrage about Adam Schiff’s subpoena of the phone records? I know Congress has the power of subpoena, but a conventional subpoena has to go through a court where probable cause must be demonstrated. Is there no restriction if Congress does it?
Schiff subpoenaed the records of a fellow member of Congress (Devin Nunes), a journalist (John Solomon), and the president’s personal lawyer (Rudi Giuliani).
Not only was Schiff trampling on due process and the Fourth Amendment, but he threw in the First Amendment, separation of powers, and attorney client privilege as well.
The victims need to sue and take this all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Justice demands that Congress should demonstrate the same level of probable cause that a prosecutor would have to show, or our rights as citizens mean nothing.
If Schiff can disregard the rights of those people, what chance do you and I have?
Published in Politics
It kind of makes you wonder exactly how much spying he did, and on who? You think those were the only four (or six) people he spied on? Who else gets spied on regularly? Members of Congress? How many private citizens are currently under surveillance without warrant?
And who got those records for him?
Many, many heads must roll.
Exactly. Also who is doing the spying. I suspect there is much more of this abuse of power stuff than we suspect. It may be that all political class is spied on by the bureaucracy as part of their routine to keep their power. It was that only Trump was so new to the process they had to do a bunch of covert operations quickly to get leverage and then they decided to use the leverage since Trump seem to fight back and not fold as the political class does.
I think we will see a lot more outrage on this.
Only if done by GOP against Dems. It is perfectly fine if the Democrats do it. From what I can tell there is nothing illegal as long as the Democrats do it.
Schuff gets to answer that question when he gets subpoenaed by the Senate for the impeachment trial.
I wonder if he’ll plead some kind of privilege.
I naturally assume that the GOP is just as dirty as the Dems when it comes to spying.
Term limits might not cure Washington dysfunction, but it would certainly throw a wrench into the works.
Randy Webster: I wonder if he’ll plead some kind of privilege.
Of course he will. Didn’t some wacko judge grant Fauxahontas the new right of “sovereign privilege” to libel the conservative school kids who were attacked at the Capital last year without any consequences?
I think the Dems and their Never Trumper acolytes may seriously rue this day when they gleefully shred other peoples constitutional rights, because these crimes will stick to them like monster glue forever. They forever will be known as those will take away your Constitutional rights upon the most flimsy of excuses if it grants them an advantage. The outrage and the stain of that atrocious un-America behavior will never go away.
Would guillotines help?
Schiff and his crew use burner phones no doubt.
When I see Schiff and Nunes in the same photograph (which is fairly often, as they are on the same committee, and Nunes is the ranking minority member), I wonder how Nunes can resist the urge to put his hands around that skinny neck and SQUEEZE until those bug-eyes pop out! I wouldn’t be able to resist….
HEY, Biden has already said he will not testify if called by the Senate! If that happened, can Cocaine Mitch tell the Federal Marshals to go find him and drag his sorry carcass into the Senate trial?
Why did Schiff demand the phone records when he didn’t need them for the investigation? Answer: because he wanted to.
Or perhaps the implicit threat that he can get phone records on anybody, anytime he wants, so you’d better not cross him.
Fortunately Devin Nunes is suing him. The man’s behavior is delusional. The female professor accused Trump of seeing himself as king. She needs to take a closer look at Schiff.
He was trying to get Nunes out of the committee again like Paul Ryan did when the Dims filed an ethics complaint over Nunes warning Trump he was under surveillance in the post election period. Ryan caved, McCarthy, who represents Bakersfield, capital of red CA, did not.
What amazes me is that all the Democrats I hear or know, are not outraged by the whole process. I didn’t realize what kind of danger we’re facing from ordinary Democrats. Those with Federal power have shown their colors for years, but this is scary.
Life would be easier for everyone if the Democrats would just focus on winning the next election. Oh wait, that’s what they are doing…sorry. “My bad!” (I hate that saying)
Well, in theory, the same could happen to Schiff (and his staff members), and their call records could be included in a Senate report. The justification for this might, in theory, be to discover to what extent Schiff and/or his staff members colluded with the whistleblower. This is assuming, of course, that his/their call records have not been subpoenaed already. Might have happened a long time ago. Speculation is great, isn’t it?
I think the inferences that could be made from those call records would be valuable information for the American people to know about as they deliberate at home over a Senate trial. At the very, least inferences could be drawn about Schiff’s (and/or his staff’s) intent, biases and overall plan to use the intelligence community for political advantage.
What goes around comes around.
Remember, Schiff has had an Ahab-like obsession with the 45th President. He has used his access to the media to push false stories about the president for years. Recently, he falsely quoted the president’s words to the president of Ukraine. This is someone who might be a little nuts, two slices of bread short of a sandwich.
The restriction is that the legislative branch has to figure out a way to enforce it when the target refuses to comply.
If the subpoena is directed at the named individuals, they just thumb their noses at Schiff. If the subpoena is directed at a telephone company or other external holder of records, the telephone company will probably refuse to comply. Most of its incentives are to refuse to comply. If the telephone company did comply, then the telephone company would lose lots of customers as those customers worry about the privacy of their information. Compliance would also set up a precedent that could generate a significant administrative burden for the telephone company, if the legislative body then starts demanding telephone records for a lot of people. If the telephone company does respond, it is most likely to be a suit in a regular court to demand a court ruling that the telephone company is not obligated to provide the information demanded by the subpoena.
I believe the “sergeant-at-arms” is the enforcement arm of the legislative branch. The federal Marshalls are not under the control of the legislative branch (they are part of the Department of Justice, so using them would require the cooperation of someone who reports to the U.S. President). The primary tool available to the sergeant-at-arms is a limited power to arrest people and put them in a small jail inside the legislature’s building. I doubt that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will allow the sergeant-at-arms to arrest any of the listed people, nor to arrest the corporate head of any telephone company. But, should any of them be arrested, they would file a petition to a real court claiming they were being improperly imprisoned (writ of habeas corpus).
Just because some government entity or agency demands information from a citizen does not mean the citizen must provide that information. Congress demanded from then-Attorney General Holder information about gun-running to Mexico, Holder refused to provide the information, Congress cited Holder for contempt-of-Congress, and Holder is running around freely and the information was never provided to Congress.
The Democrats have some leverage over Rep. Nunes because he is a member of Congress (House of Representatives), and the House has rather broad ability to act against its own members using various internal rule based disciplinary tactics. But doing so in the current circumstances is likely to create an even higher level of Republican vs. Democrat warfare in Congress. I think there are still enough sane Democrats in the House to prevent that from happening.
Laws for thee (and Trump) and not for me.
Can’t recall House Rules on Ethics Committee but I would hope that if the GOP takes back house that they quickly expell Schiff from that that body. Quickly, without much buildup. Unceremoniously
Schiff is the scariest man in American right now as he will stop at nothing to go after the Republican Party. He will lie, cheat and do whatever it takes, legal or illegal, to retake the presidency. When you combine dirty Schiff and the ruthless Pelosi together, you have a powerful force, and Trump cannot fight them alone.
Can only the House issue subpoenas?
Tar and feathers. Tradition is important.
Only with a court order, which would be litigated all the way to the Supreme Court…years from now.
Where “caved” = “colluded.”
Even if Biden could successfully argue that executive privilege protects him from having to testify, he will still have to show up and sit there while Senators fire pointed questions at him while he remains silent, according to the recent decision by the Judge who handled Mr. Mcgahn’s case, no? Having to sit there while politicians pound you with questions is pretty tough, especially with the TV cameras rolling. This is assuming, of course, that the judge’s decision is not overturned on appeal. Maybe he could get a closed hearing.
You could say that mutual assured destruction situation would prevent any of this from happening, if it were the case that the minority had subpoena power equal to that of the majority. But I wasn’t aware that they did. They certainly didn’t in the House.
Question:
Does Judge Jackson’s ruling apply only to McGahn? If so, why would she have written that “no one is above the law?”
Too often, I have heard lawyers like Neal Katyal make arguments to judges arguing a very different proposition, which is that the executive powers vested in the President by Constitution apply to all Presidents except to the 45th, whose service is an extraordinary threat, or something like like that. You see, the law and the Constitution don’t apply equally to everyone, you see. This risible, lawless, and legally vacuous argument never received the rebuke that, in my humble opinion, it so richly deserved. It’s partisan sophistry masquerading as legal reasoning. I hope that is not what Judge Jackson really means. Because that would be disgraceful.
All of this scaffolding was started under the Bush administration and Republicans went along with it and abetted it.
It is hardly surprising that a reptile like Schiff is using what Republicans have created. And Republicans were dumb enough to create the police state mechanisms that can be exploited.
The deep state is such a problem largely because of the Bush administration so the Obama administration could take advantage of it to advance their own agenda.
A LITTLE nuts? He’s a whole **** tree full of nuts!