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(WATCH) Jason Foster Surveillance
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Full Measure has learned that in the coming days, an Inspector General report is expected to be released related to a disturbing and important case. It implies government officials abusing their authority, crossing an important Constitutional line that’s supposed to ensure separation of powers. It involves the Department of Justice and FBI spying on the very people investigating the agencies’ misconduct.
The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.
When Senator Chuck Grassley and other members of Congress investigate insider claims about government wrongdoing— it’s staffers like attorney Jason Foster who are doing much of the hard work behind the scenes.
Some blowing the whistle to Congress are telling on the FBI and Department of Justice or DOJ.
Sharyl: Do you think that ruffled a lot of feathers inside the federal government when whistleblowers inside agencies would come to Senator Grassley with stories?
Jason Foster: Oh, absolutely. Always.
Foster left his job as Grassley’s Chief Investigative attorney six years ago, and started his own watchdog group: Empower Oversight.
Then last year he got a shocking notification. He and other Capitol Hill staffers, Democrats and Republicans, had been secretly spied on in 2017 by the very government agencies they were investigating.
Sharyl: They were surveilling you and other staffers on Capitol Hill?
Foster: They were absolutely surveilling our communications. Yes.
Sharyl: So you got a letter from Google or an email?
Foster: I got an email from Google.
Sharyl: And what did it say?
Foster: It said, ‘this is to notify you that, you know, in 2017 we complied with compulsory process, you know, and provided your information from your Google voice telephone number and your Google email to the department. We complied with the subpoena.
The time period of the spying was after Donald Trump first took office. Senator Grassley and Foster were among those officially investigating abuses by the Department of Justice and FBI related to their targeting of Trump in a false Russia collusion narrative.
Sharyl: How big a violation and what kind of violation do you see this as?
Foster: It’s a violation of the separation of powers because the Senate and the House should have had an opportunity before their staff’s attorneys’ information is collected to raise any objections to that. Certainly whistleblower communications are absolutely going to be chilled. They’re gonna be less likely to speak to Congress if they believe that the fact that they talk to
Watch video here.
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