Nunes Considering “Legal Options” Against Schiff For Exposing His Private Phone Records

Allegedly, Adam Schiff had gone snooping for Nunes' phone records before publishing them in his impeachment report.

For some additional background, The Washington Examiner shared some insight on the matter of Schiff snooping on congressmen's phone records:

Adam Schiff owes the public some answers.

          

The House Intelligence Committee chairman should explain why and under what authority he obtained and then publicized phone records that included calls involving the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, ranking Intelligence Committee Republican Devin Nunes, journalist John Solomon, and others. It is far from clear when, or even whether, House subpoena powers extend so far without a court-ordered search warrant.

          

The California Democrat has used the records to hint at attempts by the Trump team and by Nunes, Schiff’s bitter rival, to coordinate a pressure campaign against Ukraine for Trump’s personal benefit. Solomon, meanwhile, was the conduit for much of the reporting, some of it from dubious sources, that Trump’s defenders have cited as the reason Trump wanted certain Ukrainian actions investigated.

          

The exact scope of congressional subpoena power is a legal gray area, frequently fought over in the courts without clear resolution. In Schiff’s favor, Congress arguably deserves more latitude amid impeachment proceedings. And as Giuliani and his associate Lev Parnas are both reportedly under investigation by divisions of the Justice Department, it is possible, if one stretches the imagination, that Schiff was somehow just piggybacking on those investigations to secure their phone logs. 

          

But Schiff is on dangerous ground by publicizing phone calls by fellow members of Congress and journalists. Perhaps Schiff merely stumbled across Nunes's and Solomon's calls because they involved Giuliani or Parnas. But it sets a dangerous precedent that journalists, protected with good reason by the First Amendment, or members of Congress, protected with good reason by the Constitution's speech or debate clause, should be thus exposed by a committee chairman just to score what appears to be a few extra political points. 

Breitbart has more to say on Nunes' response to his phone records being exposed in Schiff's impeachment report:

Schiff’s Democratic majority released a 300-page report on Tuesday, on the eve of the first impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee, summarizing the testimony in its own inquiry. (Republicans released a dissenting report on Monday.) None of the information in Schiff’s report was new — except for the inclusion of phone records, which the report suggested showed coordination between Nunes and President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, ostensibly to smear Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch or “dig up dirt” on former Vice President Joe Biden.

In a press conference Tuesday, Schiff declined to say when, or how, he had obtained the phone records. But Nunes told conservative talk radio host Mark Levin on Wednesday evening that Schiff issued a subpoena Sep. 30 to AT&T for several phone numbers, none of which Nunes or the committee’s Republicans had recognized at the time.

Asked if he had been made aware of the subpoena, Nunes said:

Yes and no — and I’m not being wishy-washy here. We got the — he [Schiff] has to inform us of a subpoena. He informed us, showed us the subpoena on September 30th. They were random numbers — there were five random numbers. We didn’t know what the hell these numbers were about. So we didn’t know what they were working on — they don’t have to tell us what they are working on. And then, middle of November, just a few weeks ago, we get three thousand pages of phone records. What the hell is this, right? No names associated with the numbers. And so still, today, we don’t know who al live of those numbers belong to. The only reason I know about the one number is because I have Rudy Giuliani’s personal cell phone number. And so then they were able to get all the calls that I had with Rudy Giuliani, which — I mean, the joke is, I had, like, three calls with Rudy Giuliani — and then they used it to smear me in their report, again , that somehow Rudy Giuliani and I were conspiring to get an ambassador fired — an ambassador who I hadn’t even heard of until they brought her in a few weeks ago. It’s just nutty stuff.

Levin noted that the Democrats had also spied on Nunes’s staff and investigative reporter John Solomon.

Nunes responded:

I’m going to be looking for all my legal options on this, too. I mean, my civil liberties were violated here. … Adam Schiff, just because he’s chairman, doesn’t have the right to go subpoena — put a big fishing net out there — go grab a bunch of phone numbers, and have AT&T give you all the people they’ve talked to, and then him smear me and say, “Oh, he had all these conversations with Rudy Giuliani.”

Nunes also made a separate appearance on Fox News to respond to Schiff releasing his phone records.

More from Fox News:

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said Saturday that he would be pursuing legal action after his phone records were exposed in the release of the Committee's impeachment inquiry report.

On Tuesday, the Committee voted to adopt and issue the 300-page report on the findings from the panel's impeachment inquiry, accusing President Trump of misusing his office to seek foreign help in the 2020 presidential race. The report included records of calls from Nunes, presidential lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, journalist John Solomon, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Giuliani connection Lev Parnas, and other White House associates.

Appearing on "Fox & Friends: Weekend" with hosts Pete Hegseth, Lisa Boothe, and Ed Henry, Nunes said he's been under fire for three years because Republicans "continue to expose corruption," citing Democrats "unmasking Trump transition officials" and "funding the dossier" to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.

"And then, of course, over the two weeks before Thanksgiving, I think they were embarrassed by their lack of evidence they were able to present through the hearings," he said. "So, what happened is, the Friday before Thanksgiving, this fake news story drops about me supposedly being in Vienna. And then we get back from Thanksgiving and then -- lo and behold -- my name along with one of my current staff people...and a former staff person, all of a sudden our civil liberties are violated because our phone records show up in this report."

The Congressman is currently suing CNN for defamation after the network published reporting alleging that he met with Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin last year in Vienna in order to dig up "dirt" on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden was "demonstrably false."

Nunes told the "Friends: Weekend" hosts that, upon review, his phone records do not match what Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and House Democrats put in the report.