Jason Chaffetz calls out federal government for alleged surveillance of MAGA supporters on 'Fox & Friends'

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: During the January 18 episode of 'Fox & Friends,' co-host Brian Kilmeade was joined by Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz to discuss the suspected surveillance of MAGA supporters by the federal government.

Kilmeade mentioned Congressman Jim Jordan's claims that the Treasury Department had "during the last couple of years, really since January 6 started investigating banks." They were seemingly looking at client records for keywords such as MAGA, Trump, Zelle, and Cabela's.

Jason Chaffetz blames surveillance on deep state spies

Responding to Kilmeade's statement, Chaffetz said, "People often ask me what the deep state is - these are deep state spies in action. You're taking suspicionless Americans and you're qualifying them based on their political beliefs, based on their credit card transactions."

"So they're going to banks and credit unions, and they're trying to essentially score people, to look at them."

The Republican supporter shared that he goes to Cabela's himself, and has purchased guns and ammunitions from the store. "So suddenly, I am on a watch list with the federal government?" he asked incredulously.

"This is so fundamentally wrong to its core. People say, 'Oh what does it matter? We have got to root out the terrorists.' No. In America, you have the right to privacy. You should not your federal government coming after you because you shop at Cabela's, or you buy a MAGA hat. That is not the way we do things in the United States of America. That is deep state at its worst," stated Chaffetz.

Brian Kilmeade stated that the surveillance extended to media consumption

Noting the allegations to be "disturbing," the host said, "These seemed to be the tactics we used to take the Hezbollah's presence in the US, Al Qaeda's presence overseas."

"Are we turning that expertise on our own people?" asked Kilmeade, to which his guest replied affirmatively.

"You have to have articulable suspicion to go after an individual," pointed out Chaffetz. "You don't put a dragnet out there and say, 'Oh, let's take all my political opponents and put them in a bucket here so I know what they're doing and how they are doing - the transactions that they're doing.' You are oblivious to it but it's happening."

"Jim Jordan's on it and it's the right thing to do. Get after it, expose it, and shut it down," he added.