Democrats embrace exact surveillance tactics they used to warn about

For years, Democrats have been warning Americans about the dangers of law enforcement metadata collections. They cautioned that communication giants were working in cahoots with law enforcement to undermine our privacy. They said that metadata snooping might one day be used to smear other politicians.

That was then. Today, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff not only employs the power of the surveillance state to smear his colleagues and press his political agenda, he has set a number of dangerous precedents by “unmasking” his political rivals in an effort to smear them with innuendo.

With the release of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report this week, we learned that Rudolph Giuliani and his corrupt Ukrainian pal Lev Parnas, whose metadata Schiff had legally subpoenaed, were also exchanging calls with former The Hill columnist John Solomon, ranking Intelligence Republican Devin Nunes and the president’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow.

Setting aside legal concerns over client-attorney privilege, and norms of congressional behavior, the fact that a congressman leading an impeachment investigation would use his power in this way is a stark abuse of his authority. After all, none of those unmasked by Schiff were the target of the inquiry. As far as we know, in fact, none of their conversations were illegal. Most importantly, none of these calls were relevant to the case for impeachment.