Federal law provides the basis to get access to these records without a warrant, although a court order is usually required.
(Ewww!)²
So I accidentally posted before ready (stupid work, keeping me busy)…the point I was trying to make with quoting the federal law regarding obtaining phone records is that it requires decidedly less than the probable cause required by the 4th amendment. How so? Remember that they don’t get the records from the person who claims that it is private information but from the third party phone carrier who is not likely to invoke any claims of privacy.
From the statute, note the standard, which is certainly less than ‘probable cause to believe there is evidence of a crime’:
Yes, “voters get the ultimate say” - IFF they haven’t been disenfranchised, suppressed, or their votes discarded or miscounted. Those ALLOWED to vote and be counted “get the ultimate say”.
Meanwhile, the thread title is [del]bullshit[/del] sad. It’s not US Dems but Albanian dwarves who are tracking Rudy. Look, there goes one now!
IANAL but I don’t think that statute applies, since there are no courts involved here. The phone records are sought be Congress.
Maybe this is a good time to pause for the OP to return and agree that these points are all correct, the Democrats weren’t spying on Rudy, etc., and thank you all for the clarification and information.
Indeed you are correct, and thanks for that! :smack:
But my - clumsily made - point still stands, I think. The law does not hold disclosure of phone records from a third party provider to the standard of the 4th amendment, wherein probable cause and a search warrant are required.
So, the OP is off base in thinking that there was some constitutional violation that occurred when congress got a hold of Giuliani’s phone logs.
I really hope Santa finally gives you that pony you’ve been wanting for so long.
I guess my concern is that keeping this thread alive (which I acknowledge I’m now doing), which started with a major misunderstanding on the OP’s part, no doubt because his news sources aren’t that great, only spreads the misinformation in the title.
In a perfect world, the OP would come back and acknowledge that his information sources were wrong on this one, thank everyone, and request that this thread be closed. In this world, I’m not hopeful, but I’m sure that we’ll keep it going by bickering over details, none of which back up the OPs point.
Anyway, I probably won’t be back to this thread. I’ll be busy with my pony!
"Do the spineless, hate filled Democrats who are wasting time and money investigating the completely innocent and big handed Donald Trump, have to even pretend to follow the law or can they get away with whatever they want to do, those idiotic bastards?
Please, no partisanship."
Please do not respond to posts inside the Quote tags.
That is a violation of board rules.
Look at friedo’s post #18 for guidance on one way t provide responses.
From the Registration agreement:
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No malice intended, so no Warning issued. Please do not do this again.
[ /Moderating ]
Or maybe I didn’t misunderstand. Kimberly Strassel at the Wall Street Journal asserts Schiff’s subpoena occured before it was legally justified:
(The quote is from
since the original Strassel article was behind a paywall for me.)
So SDMB legal eagles, is Strassel right?
No.
I’m not going to click on a Breitbart link, nor do I have a WSJ subscription. I also have no reason to delve into the idiotic rhetoric of “spy”, “properly authorized”, “may have”, and “might have”.
What I will say, based only on the facts I know to be true, is that the whistleblower complaint was filed August 12th, the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees announce an investigation into Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine and the administration’s decision to halt aid on September 9th, Schiff subpoenaed Joseph Maguire to turn over the whistleblower complaint on September 13th, Pelosi announced support for the impeachment inquiry on September 24th, and the whistleblower complaint was “declassified” on September 26th. All of those occurred before Strassel’s alleged date of the subpoena as September 30th. I know of nothing in the law that says the investigative powers of the House committees can only be used once an impeachment inquiry becomes “properly authorized”. Do you?
Breitbart is a neonazi propaganda site and Kim Strassel is a bad-faith reporter.
You’d ask better questions if you had better news sources.
No, my knowledge of the law about all of this is scant.
That’s why I asked my original General Question. From a layman’s perspective:
Please correct me if I am wrong, but the Inquiry was kicked off with a formal vote, but the other stuff you cited wasn’t. So: the Inquiry may have had the necesary legal muster to justify a subpoena that wasn’t there when the phone records were subpoenaed. Can any SMDB legal experts cite the legal code on that?
When is someone going to accuse Strassel of being a Russian agent? LMAO (Sorry couldn’t resist a joke.)
Your questions about the law have already been answered. See posts number 7, 8, 11, 18, and 21 at least. Can you at least read those and narrow down your questions to whatever remains to be answered in your mind? If you don’t know the law, then these will explain it to you. If you do know the law and want to argue against what was posted, please do that (but that would call into question your quoted post). The other posters responded with the law – do you accept those responses? What other open questions do you have if these are closed? Can you state them without the partisan jabs about Russian agents?
I envisioned random Democrats seeing Rudy out there and phoning it in to some central HQ in kind of a “Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” thing.
The power of the legislature to issue subpoenas is not contained in a singular legal code.
“While there is no express provision of the Constitution or specific statute authorizing the conduct of congressional oversight or investigations, the Supreme Court has firmly established that such power is essential to the legislative function as to be implied from the general vesting of legislative powers in Congress.” From here.
“In short, there can be no question that Congress has a right—derived from its Article I legislative function—to issue and enforce subpoenas, and a corresponding right to the information that is the subject of such subpoenas. Several Supreme Court decisions have confirmed that fact.” Committee on the Judiciary v. Miers, 558 F. Supp. 2d 53, 84 (D.D.C. July 31, 2008).
As to the breadth of that power, the Supreme Court stated: "[t]he scope of [Congress’s] power of inquiry … is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution.” Eastland v. US Serviceman’s Fund.
Finally: "The investigative power, the Court stated, “comprehends probes into departments of the Federal Government to expose corruption, inefficiency, or waste.”20 “[T]he first Congresses” held “inquiries dealing with suspected corruption or mismanagement by government officials”21 and subsequently, in a series of decisions, “[t]he Court recognized the danger to effective and honest conduct of the Government if the legislative power to probe corruption in the Executive Branch were unduly hampered.”22 Accordingly, the Court now clearly recognizes “the power of the Congress to inquire into and publicize corruption, maladministration, or inefficiencies in the agencies of Government.”23 From the above article.
Well, 21 is about a criminal investigation, and I’m not sure this technically is one now, and even less so before the vote establishing the Inquiry. The only other cite in all the posts you cite that seems relevant is:
So what is the chamber and when did they authorize it?