State Department employees who were tracking the social media accounts of more than a dozen prominent conservatives regarding the Joe Biden-Ukraine scandal were ordered by a State lawyer to stop because their activities were illegal.
Just the News reported the State Department had been monitoring and tracking the accounts of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rudy Giuliani, Dan Bongino, Sebastian Gorka, John Solomon, Jack Posobiec, Ryan Saavedra, Sara A Carter, Donald Trump Jr., Michael McFaul, Lou Dobbs and Pamela Geller.
But the campaign was ordered shut down, according to an email obtained by JTN.
“We are barred by law from actively monitoring the accounts of American citizens in aggregate – and particularly from identifying and monitoring individual, selected accounts,” the official said.
JTN reported the emails raise new questions about the accuracy of State Department officials’ testimony during the Democratic-led House impeachment hearings against President Trump.
The emails show State Department officials were worried that Joe Biden’s oversight of Ukraine policy while his son profited from a corrupt Ukrainian gas company might become “the mother load [sic] and main thread to play out, possibly thru Nov. 2020.”
JTN said the emails show the illegal monitoring was ordered to counter that narrative and another involving liberal megadonor George Soros.
The list of targets assembled by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev was described earlier by government watchdog Judicial Watch as an “enemies list.” The embassy at the time was run by Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who testified against the president in the impeaching proceedings.
JTN reported the email ordering a halt to the spying originally was heavily redacted when it was released, and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton accused the State Department of hiding facts for political gain.
The monitoring scheme first was referenced when Yovanovitch testified in the impeachment hearings that her embassy wanted to keep track of the comments regarding a column in The Hill that quoted a Ukrainian prosecutor “raising questions about her and the embassy.”
The documents show the embassy used a “mining tool” called CrowdTangle until the State Department lawyer warned it was against federal law.
