Can you imagine the danger to our republic if the Executive Branch could secretly, for months on end, and without any clear or compelling justification, surveil members of Congress tasked with overseeing those very agencies?
This chilling constitutional breach occurred, and we’re only now learning the details about this separation-of-powers violation, civil liberties undermining, and transparency imperiling activity—seven years after it began.
These revelations come from a recently released Justice Department Inspector General (IG) report, which ties the story to Russiagate. In 2017, during President Trump’s first year in office, leaks of classified information about Trump and Russia surfaced in major outlets like CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. One such disclosure involved a FISA warrant issued to surveil Carter Page, Trump’s foreign policy advisor. These warrants, later deemed dubious, were renewed four times.
Carter Page was falsely framed as a Russian agent using incomplete evidence, omitting exculpatory facts, and heavily relying on the Steele dossier, which investigators never corroborated. This misuse of FISA damaged Page’s reputation, violated his rights, and advanced a fishing expedition into Trump associates, conveniently fueling the narrative that Trump himself was a Russian agent. This narrative consumed the first two years of his presidency.
In response to the leaks, federal authorities began a mole hunt. Between 2017 and 2018, prosecutors issued subpoenas for the phone and email records of two members of Congress and 43 staffers—covering both Democrats and Republicans—claiming they might have had access to the classified information before it appeared in the press. The justification in most cases was simply “the close proximity in time between that access and the subsequent publication of the news articles,” the IG found.
The records included detailed data on communications, such as text logs, email recipient addresses, call initiations, dates, times, and durations—essentially mapping the lives of those under scrutiny. Courts also granted federal agencies non-disclosure orders (NDOs), barring communications companies from notifying those surveilled about the subpoenas. Some NDOs lasted up to four years, effectively preventing the targets—congressional overseers of these agencies—from learning of their surveillance.
Among those targeted were Jason Foster, a top staffer for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), and Kash Patel, an investigator for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA). Both were probing the Justice Department’s mishandling of Russiagate. Foster and Patel only learned of the subpoenas during the Biden administration, when communication companies were finally allowed to disclose them. Patel’s communications had been subpoenaed as early as December 2016.
Compounding the issue, the DOJ’s applications for NDOs failed to disclose that the targets were members of Congress or their staffers and relied on vague, boilerplate justifications. Until recently, DOJ policy did not require prosecutors to disclose whose records were being targeted.
While DOJ issued new congressional investigation policies during the Biden administration, these changes still allow for subpoenas without notifying or obtaining approval from the attorney general or deputy attorney general. Notably, the DOJ’s threshold for subpoenaing congressional records remains lower than that for media organizations, where stricter “exhaustion requirements” apply.
The IG report raised critical concerns about the potential misuse of such powers. Though it found no direct evidence of political or retaliatory motivation in this case, the report warned that such actions could “chill Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch” and create the appearance of inappropriate interference.
This lack of oversight leaves open the possibility of dishonest actors abusing these tools to spy on political opponents under the guise of investigating leaks. No leaker was ever charged in this case, underscoring the questionable justification for such sweeping surveillance.
The report highlights the FBI and DOJ’s troubling pattern of power abuse, undermining the very rights they are meant to protect. Kash Patel, who helped expose these abuses and was among the apparent victims, now faces the challenge—alongside Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi—of reforming agencies that too often violate constitutional protections in the name of national security.
