FITTON: Schiff’s Secret Subpoenas

From Tom Fitton’s article for The Daily Caller:

The Constitution and our civil rights have been casualties of the partisan Left’s assault on President Trump. Rep. Adam Schiff’s “Ukraine call” impeachment investigation of Trump included controversial and, as best as I can tell, unprecedented secret subpoenas issued for phone records, including those of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer. The subpoenas led to the publication of the private phone records of Giuliani, Congressman Devin Nunes, journalist John Solomon, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, attorney Victoria Toensing, and other American citizens.

In December 2019, Judicial Watch filed a federal lawsuit against Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee under the public’s common-law right of public access to examine government records after it received no response to our December 6, 2019, records request for subpoenas and related records. As our legal team put it in our lawsuit, “The records are of critical public importance as the subpoenas were issued without any lawful basis and violated the rights of numerous private citizens.”

In response, Schiff’s House lawyers claimed a smorgasbord of secrecy excuses: “sovereign immunity;” “Speech or Debate Clause” privilege; immunity from the Freedom of Information Act and transparency law. They claimed that the records are secret, and that Judicial Watch and the public do not need to see them.

Read More Here.