Politics - News Analysis

Report: Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz May Have VERY Good Reasons for Being Concerned About the FBI Obtaining Phone Records of Insurrection

Crooks and Liars has a fantastic essay on the state of the investigation into the insurrection and, most powerfully, how what looked to be a chaotic mess of anger, adrenaline, and violence, was actually far more choreographed, planned, thought-through. To that end, in looking at who participated in all this “planning,” one is forced to concentrate on some very difficult facts.

One must absorb this to appreciate the report below:

Meanwhile, police were trying to respond to dozens of different threats that seemed to be breaking out everywhere at once. Not only were violent extremists grappling with police and bashing their way into buildings, there were threats of potential snipers in trees, a report that the Proud Boys intended to destroy the local water supply, the pipe bombs at both the RNC and DNC headquarters, and reports of still more armed militia groups incoming. Police were unable to concentrate forces at the Capitol steps, because chaos seemed to be happening everywhere. This explosion of violence may have appeared chaotic and overwhelming to the police, but it clearly did not happen without planning.

That takes very serious planning and not the type that is done just the night before. This will get difficult.

With respect to planning, we had reports out this week that at least one Proud Boy member made phone calls into the White House just days before the attack. Some of us have gone our entire lives reporting on political events or working in law and have not once found ourselves calling into the White House and speaking to some official, and yet a Proud Boy did just that, days prior to the insurrection. How? Why?

Next, as Crooks and Liars notes, it is almost surely not a coincidence that the two people most associated with planning the Senate’s actual objections, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, are also the two people most concerned about “people’s privacy” with respect to the FBI and phone records from that day. During the hearing with Director Wray, Cruz and Hawley didn’t spend much time demanding answers on who planned what, they wanted to know what the FBI knew and whether the FBI abused people’s privacy.

This explosion of violence may have appeared chaotic and overwhelming to the police, but it clearly did not happen without planning. And as CNN reports, some of that planning may have been coordinated by the people who police were literally dying to protect. During the investigations of Jan. 6 that have been launched in Congress, a number of Republicans—most notably senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz—have repeatedly expressed concern about the idea of the FBI looking into phone records of those in Congress. Hawley in particular has fumed about this “violation of privacy” in multiple hearings.

He may have good reason to be concerned. Because it appears that investigators are, in fact, checking out communications between members of Congress and some of the 300 people who have already been charged with crimes related to the insurgency. Some of this seems to be records showing that criminal insurgents claimed to be working in coordination with members of Congress. Which isn’t surprising, considering that two of those arrested had this conversation on the Senate floor as they dug through senator’s desk and ripped pages from reports.

Everyone has an expectation of privacy but not while trespassing to commit felonies. If the phone records from people who trespassed and committed felonies leads to Hawley and Cruz, well that’s just how criminal investigations work, and both of them know it. That is the problem.

It certainly feels like this thing goes awfully deep and gets awfully dark down there.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak

meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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