华盛顿——前总统唐纳德·特朗普毫不掩饰他的一长串政敌。只是到现在还不清楚他会走多远去惩罚他们。
两名众议院民主党人本周披露，特朗普司法部秘密获取了他们的智能手机数据，作为揭露与俄罗斯相关调查相关的泄密来源的努力的一部分选举干扰。
令人震惊的是，政府的一个部门正在利用其权力收集另一个部门的私人信息，这一举动与水门事件期间的理查德·尼克松总统如出一辙。
周五，司法部的内部监督机构宣布，正在调查记录扣押事件。国会中的民主党领导人要求前最高司法官员在参议院委员会作证，解释为什么民主党众议员亚当·希夫和埃里克·斯威尔及其家人的iPhone记录在2018年被秘密传唤。至少12人的记录最终被苹果分享。
这场争端表明，贯穿特朗普总统任期的敌意党派斗争继续以新的和潜在的破坏性方式进行，尽管拜登政府努力将这些动荡的四年置于过去。
白宫发言人安德鲁·贝茨(Andrew Bates)表示，特朗普司法部的行为是对权力的令人震惊的滥用。
“司法部长唯一的忠诚应该是法治——而不是政治，”他说。
记录被没收的披露引发了一些令人不安的问题。还有谁可能成为目标?针对国会议员的法律依据是什么?以用户隐私为傲的苹果公司为什么要交出记录?特朗普司法部追求的是什么目的?
这些披露也迫使拜登司法部和司法部长梅里克·加兰(Merrick Garland)重新与他们的前任展开斗争。
圣路易斯华盛顿大学的法律伦理学者凯瑟琳·克拉克(Kathleen Clark)说:“这里的问题是特朗普是如何利用他的政治权力追捕他的敌人的——他是如何利用政府为他的政治利益服务的。”。
获得这些数据的努力正值特朗普公开和私下对国会和时任特别顾问罗伯特·穆勒对其2016年竞选活动与俄罗斯的关系进行调查感到愤怒之际。
特朗普在任职期间猛烈抨击泄密事件，指责一种“深层状态”通过分享不讨好的信息来削弱他。他一再呼吁司法部和司法部长“追查泄密者”，包括挑出前联邦调查局局长詹姆斯·科米和现任众议院情报委员会主席希夫。
2018年5月，他在推特上说，关于他的白宫泄密的报道被夸大了，但他说，尽管如此，“泄密者是叛徒和懦夫，我们会找出他们是谁!”
在俄罗斯调查期间，希夫和斯威尔是众议院情报委员会中最引人注目的民主党人，当时由共和党人领导。两位加州议员经常出现在有线电视新闻节目中。特朗普密切关注这些频道，并对报道感到愤怒。
没有迹象表明司法部用这些记录来起诉任何人。一位人士告诉美联社(Associated Press)，在特朗普政府后期，一些泄露的信息被解密并公开后，一些检察官担心，即使他们可以提起泄密案件，审判也会很困难，定罪也不太可能。该人士、一名委员会官员和一名了解数据扣押情况的第三人获准匿名讨论这些问题。
该人士说，联邦特工在2020年询问了至少一名前委员会工作人员，最终，检察官无法证实一个案件。
几十年来，司法部一直努力与白宫保持严格的壁垒，以避免被用作解决总统个人不满的政治工具。
对一些人来说，特朗普政府的努力比尼克松在水门事件期间迫使他辞职的行动更令人不安。尼克松的调查是在白宫外秘密进行的，而特朗普政府获取国会议员记录的举措得到了司法部高级官员的批准，并由检察官进行处理，检察官从一名联邦法官那里获得秘密传票，然后发布封口令让他们保持沉默。
“理查德·尼克松的命运对美国的政治腐败产生了抑制作用，”尼克松学者、理查德·尼克松总统图书馆和博物馆前主任蒂莫西·纳夫塔里说。“这种情况不会永远持续下去，但共和党希望清除掉尼克松的坏苹果和坏演员。”
纳夫塔里说，共和党现在与特朗普结盟太深，无法做到这一点，但这并不意味着拜登应该放手。
“这样做的原因不是报复，”纳夫塔里说。“这是向未来的美国律师发出一个信号，他们将被追究责任。”
虽然司法部例行公事地对泄露的信息进行调查，包括机密情报，但向国会议员展开这样的调查是非常罕见的。
一个不太罕见但仍然不常见的工具是秘密没收记者的电话记录，特朗普司法部也这样做了。在新闻自由组织的强烈抗议下，加兰上周宣布将停止追踪记者来源信息的做法。
传票是在2018年发出的，当时杰夫·赛辛斯是司法部长，尽管他在俄罗斯的调查中回避了，让他的副手罗德·罗森斯坦负责与俄罗斯有关的事务。后来，在司法部长威廉·巴尔的领导下，调查再次取得了进展。
苹果公司上个月通知委员会，记录已经共享，调查已经结束，但没有给出广泛的细节。据该委员会官员称，还没收了助手、前助手和家庭成员的记录，其中一人是未成年人。
其中一名知情人士说，司法部获得了元数据——可能是电话、短信和位置的记录——但没有从设备上获得其他内容，如照片、消息或电子邮件。另一位表示，苹果遵守了传票，向司法部提供了信息，并没有立即通知国会或委员会成员有关披露的情况。
记录被没收的人无法质疑司法部，因为传票直接交给了苹果公司。禁止令在失效前被延长了三次，公司在5月5日通知了客户发生的事情。
苹果在一份声明中表示，它甚至不能质疑这些授权，因为它掌握的信息如此之少，“如果不挖掘用户的账户，苹果几乎不可能理解所需信息的意图。"
美国公民自由联盟(American Civil Liberties Union)的律师帕特里克·图梅(Patrick Toomey)表示，扣押国会记录是特朗普时代一系列调查的一部分，这些调查“引起了对公民自由的深切担忧，涉及在我们的民主中没有一席之地的间谍权力。”
Seized House records show just how far Trump admin would go
WASHINGTON -- Former PresidentDonald Trumphas made no secret of his long list of political enemies. It just wasn't clear until now how far he would go to try to punish them.
Two House Democrats disclosed this week that their smartphone data was secretly obtained by the Trump Justice Department as part of an effort to uncover the source of leaks related to the investigation of Russian-relatedelectioninterference.
It was a stunning revelation that one branch of government was using its power to gather private information on another, a move that carried echoes of President Richard Nixon during Watergate.
On Friday, the Justice Department's internal watchdog announced that it was investigating the records seizure. And Democratic leaders in Congress are demanding that former top Justice officials testify before a Senate committee to explain why the iPhone records of Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both Democrats, and their family members were secretly subpoenaed in 2018. The records of at least 12 people were eventually shared by Apple.
The dispute showed that the rancorous partisan fights that coursed through the Trump presidency continue to play out in new and potentially damaging ways even as the Biden administration has worked to put those turbulent four years in the past.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the conduct of Trump’s Justice Department was a shocking misuse of authority.
“Attorneys general’s only loyalty should be to the rule of law — never to politics,” he said.
The disclosure that the records had been seized raised a number of troubling questions. Who else may have been targeted? What was the legal justification to target members of Congress? Why did Apple, a company that prides itself on user privacy, hand over the records? And what end was the Trump Justice Department pursuing?
The revelations also are forcing the Biden Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland to wade back into a fight with their predecessors.
“The question here is just how did Trump use his political power to go after his enemies — how did he use the government for his political benefit,” said Kathleen Clark, legal ethics scholar at Washington University in St. Louis.
The effort to obtain the data came as Trump was publicly and privately fuming over investigations by Congress and then-special counsel Robert Mueller into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump inveighed against leaks throughout his time in office, accusing a “deep state" of working to undermine him by sharing unflattering information. He repeatedly called on his Justice Department and attorneys general to “go after the leakers,” including singling out former FBI Director James Comey and Schiff, now chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
In May of 2018, he tweeted that reports of leaks in his White House were exaggerated, but said that nonetheless, “leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!”
Schiff and Swalwell were two of the most visible Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, then led by Republicans, during the Russia inquiry. Both California lawmakers made frequent appearances on cable news shows. Trump watched those channels closely and seethed over the coverage.
There’s no indication that the Justice Department used the records to prosecute anyone. After some of the leaked information was declassified and made public during the later years of the Trump administration, there was concern among some of the prosecutors that even if they could bring a leak case, trying it would be difficult and a conviction would be unlikely, one person told The Associated Press. That person, a committee official and a third person with knowledge of the data seizures were granted anonymity to discuss them.
Federal agents questioned at least one former committee staff member in 2020, the person said, and ultimately, prosecutors weren’t able to substantiate a case.
For decades, the Justice Department had worked to maintain strict barriers with the White House to avoid being used as a political tool to address a president's personal grievance.
For some, the Trump administration’s effort is more disturbing than Nixon’s actions during Watergate that forced his resignation. Nixon’s were done in secret out of the White House, while the Trump administration moves to take the congressmen’s records were approved by top Justice Department officials and worked on by prosecutors, who obtained secret subpoenas from a federal judge and then gag orders to keep them quiet.
“The fate of Richard Nixon had a restraining effect on political corruption in America,” said Timothy Naftali, a Nixon scholar and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “It didn't last forever, but the Republican Party wanted to cleanse itself of Nixon's bad apples and bad actors.”
The Republican Party is far too aligned with Trump to do that now, but it doesn't mean Biden should let it go, Naftali said.
“The reason to do this is not revenge,” Naftali said. “It's to send a signal to future American lawyers they will be held accountable.”
While the Justice Department routinely conducts investigations of leaked information, including classified intelligence, opening such an investigation into members of Congress is extraordinarily rare.
A less rare but still uncommon tool is to secretly seize reporters’ phone records, something the Trump Justice Department also did. Following an outcry from press freedom organizations, Garland announced last week that it would cease the practice of going after journalists’ sourcing information.
The subpoenas were issued in 2018, when Jeff Sessions was attorney general, though he had recused himself in the Russia investigation, putting his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, in charge of Russia-related matters. The investigation later picked up momentum again under Attorney General William Barr.
Apple informed the committee last month that the records had been shared and that the investigation had been closed, but did not give extensive detail. Also seized were the records of aides, former aides and family members, one of them a minor, according to the committee official.
The Justice Department obtained metadata — probably records of calls, texts and locations — but not other content from the devices, like photos, messages or emails, according to one of the people. Another said that Apple complied with the subpoena, providing the information to the Justice Department, and did not immediately notify the members of Congress or the committee about the disclosure.
And the people whose records were seized were unable to challenge the Justice Department because the subpoenas went to Apple directly. The gag order was renewed three times before it lapsed and the company informed its customers May 5 what had happened.
Apple said in a statement that it couldn't even challenge the warrants because it had so little information available and “it would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users’ accounts.”
Patrick Toomey, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the seizure of congressional records was part of a series of Trump-era investigations that “raise profound civil liberties concerns and involve spying powers that have no place in our democracy.”
