Friday during an appearance on Huntsville, AL radio’s WVNN, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL) called on House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to be censured for using his subpoena power as committee chairman to obtain phone records of his congressional counterpart on that committee, ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).
Schiff had obtained and released to phone records between Nunes and others involved in his committee’s so-called impeachment inquiry in a report last week.
Byrne told “The Jeff Poor Show” the House Republican caucus had met and heard from Nunes about the matter, which Byrne called “frightening,” and warned it could set a precedent for Congress in the future, regardless of the party in power.
“This is like something you would see out of some autocratic dictatorship,” Byrne said. “For Adam Schiff to use his power to get the phone records of another member, including someone like Devin Nunes, who is the ranking member on that committee just shows these Democrats don’t have any limit to what they think they should be able to do. It’s frightening. I’ve got to tell you, we were having a meeting of the House Republican Conference, and I got to tell you about it. Devin came up and explained everything from start to finish with us. And it is just frightening to think that one member of Congress, Adam Schiff — just one member — can get phone records or any other personal information of any other member of Congress. That has never happened before and should never happen again.”
The Alabama Republican, who is also a candidate for U.S. Senate, said he did not know whether or not Schiff’s actions were a rules violation. However, he argued action should be taken, regardless.
“We don’t know yet if it is a true violation of the rules,” he continued. “We have people in our conference I know that are taking a hard look at it. I think whether it is a violation of rules or not, he ought to be censured. I think we ought to put that out there. I know there are some Democrats who are concerned about it because they say if you guys get in control again, that gives y’all the power to do that to us. And I said, ‘Yeah, neither party should do it to the other, or any circumstance. It is going to be interesting to see how that unfolds. But, I know it is exploding in the House. It is a very big issue. And I just got to say every citizen in the United States ought to be concerned about somebody like Adam Schiff trying to go out and get their personal information just because he has a whim to do it.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.