The US Department of Justice plans to tighten its rules regarding obtaining records from members of the US Congress, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Monday, amid revelations that the department under former US president Donald Trump had secretly seized records from Democrats and members of the media.
“Consistent with our commitment to the rule of law, we must ensure that full weight is accorded to separation-of-powers concerns moving forward,” he said.
Garland’s statement came as an official said that US Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers planned to leave by the end of next week.
Demers, who was sworn in a few weeks after the subpoena for the Democrats’ records, is one of the few Trump appointees who has remained in US President Joe Biden’s administration.
The agency is struggling to contain the fallout over revelations that it had confiscated telephone data from Democrats in the US House of Representatives and reporters as part of a leaks probe.
The disclosure is also forcing Biden administration officials to wade back into a fight with their predecessors — something they have wished to avoid.
Media reports last week said that the agency had secretly subpoenaed Apple in 2018 for metadata from two Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee — US representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell — as they investigated Trump’s ties to Russia.
At the time, Schiff was the highest-ranking Democrat on the committee, which was led by Republicans.
The intelligence panel initially said 12 people connected to the committee — including aides, former aides and family members — had been swept up, but more have since been uncovered, a person familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
The subpoena, issued Feb. 6, 2018, requested information on 73 telephone numbers and 36 e-mail addresses, Apple said.
It also included a nondisclosure order that prohibited the company from notifying any of the people, and it was renewed three times, the company said in a statement.
Apple said it could not challenge the warrants because it had so little information and “it would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users’ accounts.”
Garland said that “political or other improper considerations must play no role in any investigative or prosecutorial decisions.”
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and
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