US House Panel To Probe Reports Justice Dept. Spied On Trump's Political Enemies

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th June, 2021) The US House Judiciary Committee will investigate the Trump administration's alleged efforts to spy on political enemies in the media and in Congress while investigating leaks of classified information to the press, Chairman Jerry Nadler said in a press release.

"The House Judiciary Committee will investigate the Trump Administration's surveillance of Members of Congress, the news media, and others," Nadler said on Monday. "I have instructed my staff to begin that work without delay."

Nadler said the Trump Justice Department used criminal investigations as a pretext to spy on the former president's perceived political enemies.

The US Congress must make it extraordinarily difficult for the Justice Department to spy on lawmakers or the news media, Nadler said.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department under the administrations of former President Donald Trump and his successor, Joe Biden, tried to obtain logs of its reporters as part of such probes to find out their sources, while also imposing a gag order on the newspaper in order to prevent it from reporting on the investigation.

The Justice Department reportedly managed to obtain three-and-a-half months' worth of phone records from NYT journalists Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt.

Last month, Biden's Department of Justice revealed government seizures of phone records from The Washington Post's journalists and a CNN reporter during the Trump presidency.