Congressional Republicans have been targeted by a crime wave this spring, with burglars curiously able to repeatedly break into offices without security noticing.
Despite security in the Hill office buildings, the offices of Reps. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) were burglarized last month, with Runyan’s office hit twice. Also hit was the Oversight and Government Reform Committee office and the staff office for the Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security, both under control of the Republican majority.
Items taken from Runyan and Lewis’ offices included autographed baseball, commemorative knickknacks, and cameras.
Gowdy, whose office is next door to Runyan’s in the Longworth House office building, told CNN yesterday that the thefts from his office seemed to be for resale, since they took a computer monitor and cameras but left things with information such as hard drives.
Gowdy appealed the bill he was sent for the missing monitor. “The members are personally liable for material taken from the offices, and if that’s the rule, I am happy to reimburse whomever for the cost of it,” he said. “Capitol Hill police provide security for the office building, so my letter to House administration was kind of a procedural or administrative letter.”
The former prosecutor said he was “stunned that you can walk out a Congressional office building carrying digital cameras and computer screens and not garner anyone’s attention.”
“I don’t know that they have any suspects,” Gowdy said. “I will pay whoever I owe. I am a rule follower. I do think it is a little bit crazy when you lock your doors and you do everything that you’re supposed to do — in my old job we didn’t make victims reimburse their employers when things happened, but I will do whatever the rules require me to do.”
Prepping the battlespace. One of these times it’ll be the files. And it’s the security guys that are doing it.
I dont want to see DC turned into any more of a bunker than it already is – isolating these poobahs from We The People – but I guess these guys either hold themselves above the rest of us sheeple who must live under cameras and surveillance 24/7, or they are about 50 years behind the times when it comes to ‘security’. Why aren’t there any surveillance cameras? Why are only Repubs being targeted? Something seems way off about this whole affair…
You don’t steal computer files, you simply download copies to your flash drive. If it’s paper, take photos with your smart phone.
Now, taking these penny-ante stuff may provide cover in case you’re caught (I’m sorry I stole the computer monitor to sell for my drug habit, please send me to rehab) or else it’s just to annoy the other side — possibly a warning shot of worse to come if you don’t go along with the Left.
Given what was taken and not taken, it’s too random to be random. Especially given that it had to be an inside job.
Hmmmmmm…. Wasn’t there a burglary back in the ’70s?
And weren’t many of the current Dems all fresh faced in Washington working to Right the Wrongs committed in the burglary?
So I guess the lesson the Dems learned from that burglary was; “How To!”
Those weren’t thieves, they were plumbers.
Isn’t this how Watergate began?
Exactly!
This may be “Watergate II”; this this parties are reversed and, affected are only Republicans!
Agree this is probably just cover for whatever they could copy off the hard drives. They need to either set up their own security – or at the least go the route of a lot of parents suspicious of baby sitters and set up their own hidden camera system to record who is actually commiting these crimes.
Of course if the burglaries had been of Democrat Congressional offices the media butt boys of the left would be plastering this all over the front page for weeks like Watergate, even without proven fabricators like Woodward and Bernstein feeding them information.