Our new court filing opposing @TheJusticeDept's effort to impose permanent secrecy on how it sought to hide the collection of my phone and email logs—along with the records a dozen other attorneys for oversight committees in Congress. ⬇️🧵 empowr.us/wp-content/upl…
1. Did @TheJusticeDept fail to alert the court the phone and email logs it sought belonged to Congressional oversight attorneys?
2. Did it also fail to alert the court that sought to renew the gag orders on @Google even after the leak probe that supposedly justified the subpoenas was closed?
How could gag orders possibly be justified long after the case is closed? It's reasonable to suspect it was to hide from the public the extent of its secret collection of Congressional communications records and the abuses committed in the process.
Unless the court unseals the records, you are not allowed to know.
The @JusticeOIG and Congress are both investigating, so it's a pointless waste of time and taxpayer money for DOJ to be delaying the inevitable by opposing our motion to unseal what it secretly claimed to the court for six years.
These are not "grand jury materials" but rather DOJ's secret requests to a court for gag orders forcing companies like @Google to hide from Congressional attorneys that it forked over their records to the Executive Branch.
Obviously, they ought to be open to public scrutiny.
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1. Few saw the historical significance of this issue when it first surfaced publicly last year. Bravo to @ProfMJCleveland, @mtaibbi, @LovelaceRyanD, and all those who won't let it go.
Why do supposedly professional investigators make snap judgments about what to pursue (Steele Dossier) v. what not to pursue (Clinton E-Mail probe/Clinton Plan Intel)?
It's not the Federal Bureau of Gut Feelings or What Feels True.
Our appeal of Judge Boasberg's order keeping secret the DOJ's arguments for hiding its collection of my and my Capitol Hill colleagues communications records a secret for more than six years—even after the probe that supposedly justified it was closed.
DOJ attorneys targeted the communications records of attorneys for the oversight committees in Congress probing DOJ's misconduct in the Carter Page FISA application.
We argue that the Judge Boasberg failed to apply the proper standard.
He improperly characterized these judicial gag order applications, which are governed by statute, as "ancillary grand jury materials" under 6(e).
But DOJ submitted these filings to a court, not a grand jury.
We outline 18 legally protected whistleblower disclosures @GOBactual made.
Many were to Congress and already got lots of public attention. But look at #17.
It was an internal report, not on a high-profile politically charged issue.
But was it the catalyst for what came next?
@GOBactual An ambush criminal interview, followed by stranding his family without their belongings and blowing up his life in the middle of a cross country move?
This feels like more than just typical FBI CYA on something politically embarrassing.
Proven high performers before they blew the whistle on the @TheJusticeDept taking a dive in the Hunter Biden case.
Everything changed. Isolated. Frozen out of career advancement. Scrutinized relentlessly, looking for anything to hang them with. Work life became hell.
The double standard was there from the very beginning. Just to open the case, the bar was higher "for a political family like" the Bidens.
The protected disclosures internally within the IRS started from the very beginning too.
3/🧵Don't just take our word for it. We provided ample evidence to Congress about weaponization of the security clearance process to target the employees for political beliefs rather than legit security risks. The @JusticeOIG has testified about it.