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The U.S. Capitol Police is being probed to determine whether it illegally spied on lawmakers and others, an effort which appears to be directed only at Republicans.
“USCP Chief J. Thomas Manger confirmed the opening of the inspector general investigation in his response to congressional inquiries about USCP police tactics…including surveilling and compiling intelligence dossiers on members of Congress, their staff, and visitors,” The Federalist reported on Tuesday.
“The opening of the investigation follows news reports and accusations from lawmakers that USCP has overstepped its bounds as it tries to recover from the January 6 [2021] riots that tarnished both the Capitol and the reputation of the law enforcement agency that was supposed to keep it safe,” the news outlet explained.
U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tex.) told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday evening that a Capitol Police officer allegedly was snooping around his office in November 2021 when no one was around.
In a follow-up, cops allegedly showed up during the Thanksgiving recess and interrogated the one staffer who happened to be there, Nehls summarized in a Twitter thread.
He also released a statement on Tuesday:
My response to @CapitolPolice leadership's statement👇 pic.twitter.com/VrtzJcLl77
— Congressman Troy Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) February 8, 2022
Rep. Nehls has accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) of weaponizing the law enforcement agency for political purposes. The former sheriff claims that because he has questioned the Democrats’ partisan January 6 narrative, he is being targeted.
One Republican aide to a GOP congressman told The Federalist that “rather than addressing the massive security and intelligence failures by USCP that allowed the post-election protests to spiral into riots,” Pelosi has turned “the Capitol Police into her own force of political mercenaries….’her own personal Praetorian Guard.'”
Congressman details how Pelosi is ‘weaponizing’ Capitol Police to try to silence and destroy him https://t.co/tvnv87qpVc
— Jack Furnari (@JackBPR) February 9, 2022
A report published late last month by Politico apparently got the ball rolling for an IG investigation into potential civil liberties violations.
“After the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Capitol Police’s intelligence unit quietly started scrutinizing the backgrounds of people who meet with lawmakers, according to three people familiar with the matter…Several Capitol Police intelligence analysts have already raised concerns about the practice to the department’s inspector general, according to one of the people who spoke for this story,” Politico claimed. This included scrutinizing social media feeds.
“In a statement provided to The Federalist, USCP categorically denied that it had surveilled lawmakers or their staff and claimed the January 24 Politico article was inaccurate,” the article authored by The Federalist’s co-founder Sean Davis added.
“While I am confident in our methods, I am asking the USCP Office of the Inspector General to review the USCP’s programs related to these security assessments to assure both this Committee, the Congress as a whole, and the public that these processes are legal, necessary, and appropriate,” Chief Manger asserted in a letter to seven GOP lawmakers, which also denied the allegations in the Politico story.
Davis also provided detail on the Capitol Hill cop’s alleged stealth visit to Rep. Nehl’s office in November 2021, in the course of “routine security patrol,” during which he spotted an open office door and “suspicious writings mentioning body armor” on a whiteboard.
Just days before the USCP officer entered Nehls’ office and took a picture of the whiteboard Nehls and his staff used to brainstorm and catalog legislative ideas, the Washington Post ran a story about a federal government contractor in rural Texas who defrauded the United States by supplying Chinese-made body armor instead of body armor manufactured in the United States…
According to Nehls…his office whiteboard specifically called out faulty Chinese body armor. In fact, that Washington Post article was a key catalyst spurring Nehls to consider drafting legislation banning the procurement of Chinese body armor, a spokesman for Nehls told The Federalist….
In correspondence on the matter with the House Administration Committee, USCP Chief Manger said the responding officer who investigated Nehls’ office was also concerned by “an outline of the Rayburn Building with an X marked at the C Street entrance” drawn on the whiteboard. A Nehls spokesman told The Federalist it was little more than a crude map to help an intern find an ice machine in the Rayburn House Office Building.
“If Capitol Police leadership had spent as much time preparing for January 6 as they spent investigating my white board, the January 6 riot never would have happened,” Neils insisted. “When I was a patrol officer responding to a call, I didn’t have the time or authority to go rifling through someone’s personal papers. There are serious 4th Amendment, constitutional issues at play here.”
The outcome of the investigation, once all the facts unfold, and including whether these allegations pan out, remains to be seen.
If any of this seems familiar, however, recall that the politicized intelligence agencies also sought to undermine the Trump administration, with the Russia-collusion hoax as a primary example.
Many Republicans from former President Trump on down as well as Fox News’ Carlson particularly want to know why Pelosi and her surrogates were unwilling to call out the National Guard on January 6 despite a request by the previous Capitol Hill Police chief for reinforcements.
NEW!
President Donald J. Trump:
"There would have been no January 6, as we know it, if Nancy Pelosi heeded my recommendation to bring 10,000 Soldiers, or the National Guard, into the Capitol. End the Unselect Committee January 6th Witch Hunt right now… pic.twitter.com/kQoQpaSLmW
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) February 7, 2022
Tucker: Pelosi knows why Jan 6 riot happened, why won’t she tell us? https://t.co/yE9XJpeBq6 pic.twitter.com/OGvV7iyR8d
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) July 23, 2021
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Robert@bizpacreview.com
Robert Jonathan is a staff writer for BizPac Review. He is a longtime writer/editor for news aggregation websites and has also developed content in the legal and financial publishing sectors as well as for online education. He earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Connecticut School of Law, “a law school the basketball teams can be proud of.”
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