Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tore into Special Counsel Jack Smith, accusing him of ‘spying on political opponents’ during the Jan. 6 probe and calling the alleged surveillance ‘an abuse of power beyond Watergate.’<\/p>\n
The FBI, working under Smith\u2019s direction, obtained call logs and metadata tied to nearly a dozen GOP senators, including Hawley, as part of its investigation into the Capitol riot, Fox News reported. The tracking involved call records and timestamps, not the content of the conversations.<\/p>\n
Hawley told Fox News Digital on Monday that the newly released documents suggest that Biden\u2019s administration was ‘spying on the president\u2019s political opponents,’ which he called ‘a profound violation of the separation of powers.’<\/p>\n
He said the activity fits what he views as part of a broader pattern of executive overreach under Biden, citing alleged surveillance of Catholic churches, parents at school board meetings and social media censorship.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
‘The truth comes out. Biden\u2019s Stasi who claimed to be saving \u2018our sacred democracy\u2019 in fact worked overtime to destroy it \u2014 all for power. They spied on Catholic churches, prosecuted pro-lifers, deployed the FBI against parents at school board meetings \u2014 and tried to tap the phones of their political enemies. Including mine,’ Hawley wrote on X.<\/p>\n
‘This is an abuse of power beyond Watergate, beyond J. Edgar Hoover, one that directly strikes at the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the First Amendment,’ he continued. ‘We need a full investigation of all involved: who knew about it, who ordered it, and who approved it. Anyone and everyone who violated the law must be prosecuted. The way to save the country is to restore the rule of law.’<\/p>\n
Hawley said he was targeted because he is a conservative Republican who vocally opposed Biden and ‘his lawlessness.’<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
‘It\u2019s obviously totally partisan,’ the senator said, adding that he\u2019s proud to have called out what he described as the abuse of power by the FBI. He also said the alleged conduct was ‘dangerous, very, very dangerous’ for the country.<\/p>\n
Hawley said the scope of the alleged surveillance was even greater than Watergate.<\/p>\n
‘This is worse than Watergate,’ he said, arguing that Biden ‘activated the entire government to go after anybody who dared to oppose him.’ He accused the administration of using agencies such as the FBI, DOJ and DHS to silence critics and monitor private citizens.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hawley called for a full Justice Department investigation and said appointing a special counsel ‘who will devote their full attention to it’ would be appropriate.<\/p>\n
‘We\u2019ve got to have a total accountability, total transparency and a full accounting of everybody who was involved in this \u2014 everybody who knew about it, signed off on it, and had any part in it, and I just can\u2019t imagine that this is legal\u2026 and anybody who committed legal violations needs to be prosecuted,’ he said.<\/p>\n
Hawley has framed the controversy as a test of constitutional limits, saying the government must be held accountable when power is used to pursue political opponents instead of upholding the rule of law.<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital\u2019s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tore into Special Counsel Jack Smith, accusing him of ‘spying on political opponents’ during the Jan. 6 probe and calling the alleged surveillance ‘an abuse of power beyond Watergate.’ The FBI, working under Smith\u2019s direction, obtained call logs and metadata tied to nearly a dozen GOP senators, including Hawley, as part…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}