BY SCOTT WONG AND JULIEGRACE BRUFKE
\nThe Hill<\/p>\n
House Republicans are escalating their feud with Intelligence Committee Chairman\u00a0Adam Schiff<\/a><\/span>, accusing the California Democrat of carrying out a \u201csmear campaign\u201d against his GOP counterpart, Rep.\u00a0Devin Nunes<\/a><\/span>\u00a0(Calif.), by publishing his phone records in the panel\u2019s sweeping impeachment report.<\/p>\n Collecting the phone data has been strongly defended by Democrats while Republicans have seized on the new controversy as unfair and a bad precedent.<\/p>\n President Trump<\/a><\/span>\u2019s Republican allies on Capitol Hill have sought to shine the spotlight back on Schiff as Democrats build their case against the president and continue marching toward an impeachment vote as soon as next week.<\/p>\n During Monday\u2019s impeachment hearing, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Rep.\u00a0Doug Collins<\/a><\/span>\u00a0(Ga.), spent several minutes ripping into the Democrats for including the Nunes records \u2014 something Collins argued added no value to the report and was only done as a \u201cpolitical vendetta\u201d against one of Trump\u2019s key defenders.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a drive by. It was a gratuitous drive by that you wanted to smear the ranking member,\u201d Collins told Schiff\u2019s Democratic counsel, Daniel Goldman.<\/p>\n Schiff\u2019s report detailed that Nunes had multiple communications with key figures in the House impeachment inquiry:\u00a0Rudy Giuliani<\/a><\/span>, Trump\u2019s personal lawyer, as well as with Giuliani\u2019s Soviet-born associate Lev Parnas, who has been indicted on campaign finance charges. The records also show Giuliani was in communication with conservative opinion columnist John Solomon, who previously worked for The Hill.<\/p>\n The phone logs indicate Nunes and Giuliani spoke briefly three times and texted once on April 10. It also shows numerous attempts at contact between Parnas and Nunes on April 12, including an eight-minute phone call.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The metadata \u2014 which only show phone numbers and durations of calls, not the substance of the calls or texts \u2014 raises serious questions about why Nunes was in frequent contact, at conspicuous times, with individuals who were part of a shadow campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate one of Trump\u2019s key political rivals, former Vice President\u00a0Joe Biden<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s \u201cdeeply concerning that at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival,\u201d Schiff said recently, \u201cthat there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity.\u201d<\/p>\n Intelligence Committee Democrats have said they did not subpoena Nunes\u2019s or Solomon\u2019s phone records. But they declined to name specific individuals whose phone records they targeted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Committee did not subpoena call records for any member of Congress or their staff, including Ranking Member Nunes, or for any journalist, including Mr. Solomon,\u201d Schiff spokesman Patrick Boland said in a statement. He declined to comment further on Monday.<\/p>\n House Democrats, including Schiff, have said it is standard procedure for investigators to seek phone records and suggested GOP lawmakers are pandering to their base in a public relations effort. Some have speculated that the phone records of Giuliani and Parnas were subpoenaed, and those records showed contact with Nunes and Solomon.<\/p>\n Collins and other Republicans said they had no issue with the Intelligence panel issuing subpoenas to mobile-phone carriers or writing its report. But they thought it was inappropriate to reveal the names of individuals swept up in the call logs who are not the target of a criminal investigation. Collins said the report should have referred to Nunes anonymously as \u201cCongressperson 1.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere I do have a problem and a really big problem \u2026 is the fact that somebody made a decision to match certain data, megadata, metadata that had been collected through the subpoena with phone numbers of journalists and members of Congress, and that is the beginning of a surveillance state, which I think is outrageous,\u201d said former Judiciary Chairman\u00a0Jim Sensenbrenner<\/a><\/span>\u00a0(R-Wis.), one of the architects of the 2001 Patriot Act, which drastically expanded federal surveillance authority in the wake of the 9\/11 terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n Another Judiciary Committee member, Rep.\u00a0Tom McClintock<\/a><\/span>\u00a0(R-Calif.), told The Hill: \u201cI think it\u2019s disgraceful, it\u2019s appalling, it ought to frighten the hell out of every American. If he can do that to Devin Nunes, he can do that to anybody he doesn\u2019t like.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Minority Whip\u00a0Steve Scalise<\/a><\/span>\u00a0(La.), the No. 2 Republican in House leadership, went as far as suggesting Schiff was \u201cspying\u201d on members of Congress and the press and questioned why the records weren\u2019t raised during any of the televised Intelligence hearings last month. Top Republicans called for Schiff to testify at Monday\u2019s hearing, in hopes of having the opportunity to grill the chairman about the phone records. Schiff sent his staff counsel, Goldman, instead.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n More details about the Schiff subpoenas emerged during Monday\u2019s hearing. GOP counsel Stephen Castor testified that Republicans had received copies of six subpoenas. The first was submitted to AT&T for Giuliani\u2019s records, while the second was submitted to CSC Holdings in regard to Igor Fruman, an associate of Giuliani\u2019s who was indicted with Parnas in connection with an alleged campaign finance fraud scheme.<\/p>\n