Peak Mueller – DOJ Concealing Legal Predicate to Investigate Congressional Staff in 2017

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

Jason Foster has filed an interesting “motion to intervene” in a court filing against the DOJ effort to keep the legal rationale for a 2017 subpoena hidden. tldr version HERE

Mr. Jason Foster was one of Chuck Grassley’s congressional lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a key Grassley research staffer when the background of the DOJ/FBI Spygate operation against Donald Trump was at its apex.

In a COURT FILING, Jason Foster notes, in September 2017, the DOJ requested and received a court order which it leveraged against Google and Big Tech to gain access to the phone and electronic data of House and Senate staff members. The DOJ then filed Non Disclosure Orders (NDOs) blocking the notification of the target(s), in this example Mr. Foster himself.   Foster wants to know what justification the DOJ gave the judge to get the warrants and subpoena.

I find this motion/filing exceptionally interesting, because the originating DOJ action was in September ’17, when the Mueller cover-up was in full bloom; the Mueller team essentially controlled all of Main Justice (per Rosenstein testimony), and the effort of the DOJ was to keep a bag over the FBI/DOJ activity in the 2016 election.

As Jeff Carlson notes, the “DOJ has kept sealed their “legal rationale” for targeting the communications of congressional staff attorneys for GOP oversight committees.”

Foster notes, this DOJ subpoena appears related to the leak of the “Top Secret” FISA application used against Carter Page.  The media received that leak, in March 2107, and the FBI (Washington Field Office) was investigating how the TS-SCI classified leak originated.  At the same time, the DOJ (“Mueller team”), now in September 2017, had a vested interest monitoring ‘who knew what’ not only about the leak (James Wolfe and Mark Warner), but also about the motives of the special counsel coverup operation.

In the filing, Empower Oversight writes:

“At the time DOJ began collecting their communications records, Mr. Foster and his fellow colleagues on both sides of the aisle were communicating with confidential sources and whistleblowers whose willingness to share information with Congress is essential to its oversight function. The Legislative Branch has a constitutional interest in protecting the identity of those confidential sources and whistleblower just as journalists do under the First Amendment. Yet due to the secrecy demanded by DOJ, and granted ex parte by the Court, the nondisclosure orders deprived Congress of an opportunity to object at the time or even to know until years later that telecommunications providers had complied. Providers like Google, and perhaps even the Court, yielded to DOJ demands for secrecy without knowing the full context and constitutional implications of the subpoenas.” (more)

The Mark Warner and James Wolfe leak of the FISA application to media was one of the biggest untold stories of the 2017 Trump targeting and DC coverup operation.  Factually, the media had the full and unredacted FISA application from March 17, 2017, throughout all of their pretense reporting, as if they didn’t know the details.

The greatest likelihood is that Mueller’s team, headed by Andrew Weissmann, wanted to keep tabs on who in Washington DC was circling the truth.  The subpoena against Jason Foster and other House and Senate committee lawyers and staff would help the DOJ keep tabs on who knew the details at a very key time in the coverup operation.

Within Main Justice, DOJ at the time Andrew Weissmann (Mueller team) would want to know what Chuck Grassley and Devin Nunes had uncovered, and who would potentially be assisting them.

The DOJ search warrants, in Sept 2017 (the warrants of interest to Jason Foster), likely do not relate directly to the James Wolfe investigation, despite the timeline being very similar.  U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, from the USAO in Washington DC, was conducting the Wolfe investigation, and the Washington Field Office (WFO), FBI Agent Brian Dugan was the lead investigative unit.  These subpoenas were something else.