A member of the Federal Communications Commission criticized House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff for engaging in the “secret and partisan” act of collecting and publishing private phone call records during the Ukraine-related impeachment investigation into President Trump.
Brendan Carr, who was picked by Trump to serve as an FCC commissioner and was confirmed by the Senate in 2017 and again in 2019, said he was troubled by the Schiff’s actions during the Democratic-led impeachment of Trump in 2019. He called for scrutiny of the California Democrat’s secretive subpoenas and questioned whether Schiff was still peering into private records.
“Chairman Schiff has been collecting Americans’ private call records through a secret and partisan process,” Carr said on Thursday. “He even published some of them in the Impeachment Report. These sensitive records are protected by federal law. His conduct raises serious concerns, and I’ve asked for answers.”
“I am writing to you because your committee has collected — and may still be collecting — the protected and confidential call records of private citizens and government officials alike through a secret and partisan process that deprives Americans of their legal right to maintain the privacy of this sensitive information,” Carr said in a five-page letter he sent to Schiff.
The FCC commissioner said that “federal law has long protected the privacy and confidentiality of Americans’ call records,” including the phone numbers dialed and the date, time, and duration of calls. Carr said the FCC determined that call records contain “highly-sensitive personal information” and noted the agency had just proposed $200 million in fines against T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint for “apparent violations of these provisions.”
Carr noted that “in the case of the Impeachment Report, the records you published revealed private details about calls involving numerous individuals and offices, including an investigative journalist, seniors government officials (including at least one member of Congress), multiple attorneys to the President of the United States, and several executive branch offices.”
The phone call logs in the 658-page December report from House Democrats lists calls to or from Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to other people. The list possibly includes then-national security adviser John Bolton, as well as the call records of Rep. Devin Nunes, now-indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, Fox News host Sean Hannity, then-National Security Council aide and former Nunes staffer Kash Patel, a “White House phone number” and the “White House switchboard” and “OMB phone number.” These calls were perhaps intended for then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, conservative lawyer Victoria Toensing, conservative investigative reporter John Solomon, and Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, among others.
When Schiff was first criticized for collecting and publishing private call records, he dismissed the concerns.
“The blowback is only coming from the far right,” Schiff said. “Every investigator seeks phone records … Here, we had testimony that the president charged Rudy Giuliani with carrying out this plot. Naturally, we wanted phone records to point out they had those conversations.”
Trump was impeached by the House in December but acquitted after a trial in the Senate in early February.
The first article of impeachment detailed the Democratic allegations Trump abused his power in soliciting Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election to benefit him, asking the foreign country to announce investigations that would benefit his reelection and harm the election prospects of Joe Biden, a political opponent. The second article of impeachment details Democratic claims of obstruction of Congress, claiming he used executive power to shield against lawful subpoenas from the House of Representatives.
Carr said, “The process the committee used (and may still be using) to obtain and then publicly release these previously confidential call records raises a number of serious questions — including whether Americans are comfortable with one political party in Congress having the power to secretly obtain and expose the call records of any private citizen, journalist, or government official.” Noting that the report referenced at least 3,719 pages of such records, Carr pointed to Section 222 of the Communications Act, which “prohibits any telecommunications carrier from releasing customer call records except as authorized by the customer or as required by law.”
The FCC commissioner lobbed a number of questions at Schiff, including why the committee pursued “a secret subpoena process that deprived Americans of their right to challenge the publication of their protected call records” and what the “full scope and extent of the call records sought through the secret subpoena process” was. Carr also asked if the committee sought “real-time or location data” on the people it was investigating and wondered “whether there are First Amendment implications that flow from publishing a reporter’s call records.”
“As a country, are we comfortable with one political party in Congress having the unilateral & unchecked power to secretly obtain & publicize the confidential call records of any private citizen, journalist, or government official?” Carr asked. “Chairman Schiff has been doing exactly that.”
