Recently, evidence has come to light suggesting the Justice Department spied on one of Empower Oversight's principals while he was serving as a congressional investigator tasked with probing DOJ malfeasance.
Foster launched the watchdog group in July 2021 for the purpose of "Helping insiders safely and legally report problems to the proper authorities and to hold those authorities accountable for fixing them." Its lawyers help whistleblowers come forward, use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents, and when necessary, litigate "So that Americans can confront abuses of authority." Foster formed Empower Oversight after accumulating years of experience conducting congressional investigations often built on facilitating protected disclosures from federal employees - including as a top staffer for Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican.
The House Democrats have reserved their greatest vitriol for the "So-called whistleblowers" of the FBI. Beyond deriding the witnesses and dismissing their testimony, Democrats and media allies have sought to frame them as de facto partisan pawns of House Republicans, in part by dint of their affiliation with conservative-led organizations such as Empower Oversight.
A spokesperson for the watchdog group told me that though it is "Disappointing" and "Highly hypocritical for those who have vowed in the past to protect whistleblowers," the skepticism and hostility they have faced is nevertheless "Politics as usual in Washington." "What makes congressional Democrats' attacks different is that the mainstream media has trumpeted their partisan narrative while ignoring the facts," Empower Oversight Senior Communications Advisor Beth Levine said.
Jason Foster's brush with the Department of Justice began when Donald Trump was president - before he started Empower Oversight - and it happened without his knowledge.
Last October, Foster received a notification that in September 2017, while he was serving as chief investigative counsel to the Chuck Grassley-led Senate Judiciary Committee, the Department of Justice subpoenaed a Google Voice phone number connected to his family's telephones.
Empower Oversight officials believe that other accounts listed in the subpoena are associated with Democratic and Republican attorneys then working on House and Senate staff committees that were scrutinizing the Justice Department.
What's more, the Justice Department would seek, and the courts would grant, five one-year nondisclosure orders prohibiting Google from notifying congressional staff, including Foster, that their records had been sought.
Interestingly, Foster told RealClearPolitics that he and his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee had reviewed the then-classified FISA application in March 2017, only after the Justice Department had volunteered its existence to them.
Empower Oversight asserted in a FOIA request pertaining to the subpoenas of congressional committee staffers that: There appears to have been an extensive and far-reaching effort to use grand jury subpoenas and perhaps other means to gather the personal communications records of innocent congressional attorneys and their families with little or no legitimate predicate.
In a cover letter, Jordan noted that the executive branch had targeted those "Conducting Constitutional oversight of the Department's investigative actions - actions that were later found to be unlawful." For now, Foster chooses his words carefully when asked about the government's rationale regarding the subpoenas.
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