The exploding scandal involving the Trump administration’s use of congressional members’ records, including families and in at least one case a minor, sent CNN’s John King into an appropriately seething report about the shocking abuse of power.

Adam Schiff was the central target in the first set of records leaked to expose the ever-widening scandal. At this point, there is little known beyond the fact that this program would violate every assumption about government privacy and abuse of power. Additionally, we already know that the Trump administration was digging into the records of several people in the news media. This scares all of us because we, too, we extremely critical of the administration at the time.

This is a gross fascist-like action taken to punish and scare those who reported and criticized the Trump administration and it is hard to tell whether there are operatives still buried among the departments.

Regardless, John King of CNN simply went off on the matter:

They went after the records not only of elected officials, which is nuts. They went after the records of their family members, including a minor child. What does that tell you?”

“That tells you that it is just off the rails. There’s no other word for it. Again, if you believe Chairman Schiff, somebody else legitimately leaked a secret, the government has a right to take certain steps.

We all sign employment agreements. If you have access to sensitive information, you sign employment agreements and understand you’re subject to scrutiny. There’s a difference between legitimate scrutiny and abuse of power. And doing things, using the levers of government, especially this Justice Department, ‘law and

order,’ the levers of any government. Any levers of government, but especially there on this to go after people. You’re not supposed to do that.”

Those statements are correct, but probably need to be even stronger. Other than the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover (which was so grossly abused it sits in its own category) this would seem unprecedented. It appears plainly criminal.

“You can look at legitimate issues and then the challenge is, once you have it and this has to be done secretly because it’s so sensitive, then lay your case out in public. This seems like a gratuitous abuse of power to get vindication, to be vindictive against people the president at the time did not like. A politicized, weaponized Justice Department.”

The above statement is mor appropriate, “gratuitous,” “abuse of power,” “vindictive,” and “weaponized,” those are the more appropriate descriptions and perhaps still too light.

The primary focus at this point is Chairman Schiff, including his minor child, but there is a likelihood  (but no proof yet) that Schiff is not the only target, one thinks about Nancy Pelosi, AOC, and others.

This is also only the tip of the iceberg. We have been assured that there was so much more on the inside. Why is this stuff just “leaked,”? Where are the announcements by DOJ or the FBI? Why is the Biden Administration so tentative?

Regardless, this is fascism. There is no other word.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and @JasonMiciak