Posted on 05/15/2013 6:11:52 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
That’s the revelation made by California Congressman Devin Nunes, who sits on the House Ways And Means Committee on Hugh Hewitt’s Show Wednesday night. Here’s the key part of that transcript:
HH: The idea that this might be a Geithner-Axelrod plan, and by that, the sort of intimation, Henry II style, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest, will no one rid me of these turbulent Tea Parties, that might have just been a hint, a shift of an eyebrow, a change in the tone of voice. That’s going to take a long time to get to. I don’t trust the Department of Justice on this. Do you, Congressman Nunes?
DN: No, I absolutely do not, especially after this wiretapping incident, essentially, of the House of Representative. I don’t think people are focusing on the right thing when they talk about going after the AP reporters. The big problem that I see is that they actually tapped right where I’m sitting right now, the Cloak Room.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
From National Review:
"Yesterday, on High Hewitt’s radio show, Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, seemed to allege that the Justice Department had also “tapped” phone lines in the cloakroom, a room for lawmakers near the House floor.
That, in addition to the secret seizure of Associated Press call logs, would have raised serious balance of power issues.
A spokesman for Nunes, however, tells National Review Online that the congressman didn’t mean to make that claim.
“There was a little confusion between him and the host during the conversation: He did not mean to refer to phone records of the cloakroom itself, but of the Capitol,” said Nunes spokesman Jack Langer.
DOJ did seize call logs for a phone in the Capitol used by AP reporters, but that phone is in the press gallery, not the cloakroom."
I agree that the DOJ did not likely get the content of the calls, but the fact remains that the DOJ did get the information that the calls were being made, and to whom and from whom. It has its own benefit, as the military has used this sort of information for a long time, known as “traffic analysis.”
If the DOJ can piece together which reporter is talking to which Congressman, you don’t necessarily need to know what they said. It would be enough to know that if a reporter is regularly talking to a conservative Congressman, that reporter gets “blacklisted” and isn’t invited to Carney’s private backstage media parties.
It’s still pretty Stalinist.
I can remember reading about the NSA and phone taps in the Washington Compost over 30 years ago, the movie Enemies of the State was in part based on this fact and that movie must be 15 years old.
I agree that the whole thing smells. Your point is well taken, and is why the AP is up in arms. Having that much raw data can tell the DOJ a lot about their news gathering operations even without being able to listen to the calls.
But there was a clarification by the congressman quoted in the post. He said that the phone records grabbed by the DOJ were for the phones in the Congressional Press gallery, not in the cloakroom as previously thought. So unless the congressmen use the phone in the press gallery, the records gathered would not necessarily give them any information about calls the members of congress were making or receiving. That doesn’t make it any better, just clarifies the details a bit.
” The GOP won’t do squat!”
Yup.
Next....
Ya know, he messed with the CIA and spec ops guys.
They know where all the bodies are buried.
I expect a lot more revelations...like one per week.
I’m sorry, but it would be a violation of commie Standard Operating Procedure if they did not use all possible means against their conservative foes.
I would be shocked if they did NOT utilize all the capabilities of the NSA, FBI, DoD, and every other arm of government to wiretap and attack us.
The technical capabilities of the fedgov are just this side of magic. I know because I helped develop them.
Now we have an entirely domestic phone call where one end is inside Congress? And nobody cares anymore because it's a Democrat who's doing it?
-PJ
Anybody still think we don’t have a fascist dictatorship?
Who said no one cares? I'd say a lot of people care. I just want to make sure that we are mad about the right thing (grabbing all of these phone records in an apparent fishing expedition), and don't accuse them of something that it does not appear happened ("tapping" or actually listening in on the conversations.) If we make accusations that turn out later to be false, it make it easier for them to dismiss us when we expose actual misdeeds.
Actually, from everything I have read on this subject so far, all they did was get the phone logs. No evidence (so far) that they recorded conversations. If someone has proof to the contrary, please let me know.
I don’t think there’s any high crime or misdemeanor that I wouldn’t believe by these Maoists.
I noticed that also.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.