Sen. Marsha Blackburn is targeting top telecommunications companies as part of the latest fishing expedition from Senate Republicans. The Tennessee Republican’s effort revolves around wild claims that the Justice Department under the Biden administration “spied” on lawmakers as part of its probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection.
My colleague Steve Benen wrote an excellent explainer on the conspiracy theories at the heart of Republicans’ latest spy claims, which center on bogus allegations that the Justice Department under the Biden administration “tapped” Republicans’ phones as part of its inquiry. To quote Benen, the facts in this case suggest that “based on the available information, the truth is far more anodyne” than Republicans have been making it out to be. In fact, the records the Justice Department looked at did not include anything about the content of lawmakers’ calls. In other words, there’s no such evidence of phone tapping.
Nonetheless, Blackburn is looking to score political points. The senator sent identical letters to executives at AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon last Thursday demanding information about their purported role in helping the Biden administration “spy” on Republicans.
Blackburn is probing each company over what she baselessly calls “the egregious invasion of privacy” that they “inflicted upon eight United States Senators and one Member of Congress.”
In recent years, Republican Party officials have turned their focus on some of the top tech companies in the United States as they’ve looked to launch conspiracy theories falsely accusing them of helping Democrats weaponize the government against conservatives. These latest claims against tech companies and the Biden administration come as the Justice Department — at Donald Trump’s direction — targets his self-described political nemeses with politicized prosecutions.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
