A day after Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on Capitol Hill with records showing which unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files some lawmakers had reviewed, Republicans largely brushed aside allegations that the Department of Justice is “spying” on members of Congress.
When MS NOW asked Republicans in Congress about the situation on Thursday, most professed ignorance.
Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., both told MS NOW they hadn’t seen the reports, saying that as senators they don’t really pay attention to the House.
Pressed further, Hawley said the idea that the DOJ would track lawmaker searches “would surprise me.”
“I mean, I can’t imagine what the reason for that would be,” he said.
The controversy erupted on Wednesday, when Bondi was photographed with a record of Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s search history of the unredacted Epstein documents. (To access the unredacted files, lawmakers must review them on one of four secure portals inside a private room at Justice Department headquarters.)
Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington who had a heated exchange with Bondi during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, confirmed that the documents Bondi had flagged were, in fact, the ones she had viewed at the DOJ. She also said that for the attorney general to have that kind of information, it amounted to “surveilling members.”
“It’s totally inappropriate,” Jayapal told MS NOW in a phone interview. “Is this the whole reason they opened [the files] up to us two days early? So they could essentially surveil members to see what we were going to ask her about?”
While many Republicans sounded unconcerned about one branch of government logging what Epstein documents another branch had looked at, there were some GOP lawmakers who expressed unease.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., claimed that the DOJ is “tagging” all documents searched and reviewed by lawmakers. In a post online, Mace said she would not disclose how she confirmed the practice, but asserted that she knew the DOJ was keeping tabs.
“Based on how I confirmed this, there are timestamps associated with this tracking,” she wrote.
Although he initially doubted that the DOJ was actually tracking which documents members were viewing, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also expressed concern with the situation.
After first refusing to comment on “an allegation that is unsubstantiated,” Johnson told MS NOW on Wednesday that he hadn’t “seen or heard anything” about the scandal.
“But that would be inappropriate if it happened,” he said Wednesday night.
By Thursday morning — after speaking with Jayapal himself — Johnson seemed to have heard plenty about the situation. And he seemed less skeptical that the DOJ had actually kept tabs on lawmaker searches.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for anybody to be tracking that, so I will echo that to anybody involved with the DOJ,” Johnson said. “And I’m sure it was an oversight, that’s my guess.”
Still, other Republicans were full-throated in their defense of the Justice Department.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said it was “pretty rich” to hear Democrats complain about surveillance “after what the DOJ has done to Republican members of Congress under Jack Smith.”
As part of Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the FBI collected the phone “toll records” — metadata showing who called whom, when and for how long — of more than a dozen Republicans. Although Smith obtained grand jury subpoenas to collect that information, lawmakers have objected that they weren’t notified, accusing the DOJ of weaponization.
But Jordan saw little problem with the DOJ effectively spying on lawmakers in this instance. Asked what he would say to Republicans who are concerned about the DOJ collecting information about Epstein document searches, he said he would say “the same thing to them that I just said.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — who previously championed a provision to allow members (most notably himself) to sue the DOJ for up to $500,000 for accessing the phone records — was only slightly more equivocal when asked to compare the two situations.
He said he wasn’t sure whether the DOJ keeping track of what Epstein documents lawmakers look at was “out of line.” “Getting my phone records was out of line,” Graham said. Democrats, for their part, weren’t surprised that Republicans shrugged at the Justice Department keeping tabs on lawmakers after they made a big deal about Jack Smith collecting the phone metadata of GOP lawmakers who were allegedly working to overturn the 2020 election. To call this moment out, Jayapal said, “would require consistency on the part of Republicans.” Jayapal hoped, however, that there would be a “bipartisan effort to say this is absolutely inappropriate,” noting that there were several Republicans who “were also spied on” when they viewed unredacted documents at the DOJ. “It has to stop,” she said. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he was not surprised that the DOJ was tracking lawmaker searches. “But that’s because the bar is so low,” he said. “And, in fact, there is no bottom for the Trump administration, for Pam Bondi, for the other sycophants who are part of this corrupt administration.” Jeffries said he intended to speak with Johnson to urge him to stand up for the institution. “It does violate the principles of separate and coequal branches of government,” Jeffries said. Meanwhile, other Democrats — already incensed by Bondi’s stonewalling on Wednesday and the DOJ’s redactions of the Epstein files — renewed calls for accountability. “There’s an expectation of some privacy when we access information and when we exercise our duties,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. “And the government’s attempt to intimidate or threaten to silence members of Congress is, in fact, in my view, unconstitutional.” The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., went even further, calling it “a profound violation of the separation of powers.” “They’re spying on us while they’re complaining about members’ phone records being subpoenaed through a whole legal process — and they’re just spying on us?” Raskin said. “I mean, this is just getting Orwellian with these people.” Lillie Boudreaux, Nora McKee and Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Ali Vitali is MS NOW's senior congressional correspondent and the host of "Way Too Early." She is the author of "Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet."
Syedah Asghar
Syedah Asghar covers Congress for MSNBC.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
