Perhaps the “weaponization of law enforcement” panel needs an expanded brief. The Department of Defense had already admitted that someone had improperly leaked Jennifer-Ruth Green’s Air Force file, which contained unredacted records of a sexual assault on her during her service, while she ran for the House as a Republican.

That wasn’t the only file that the Democrat oppo-research group got, as it turns out. Now Just the News’ John Solomon reports that two House GOP committee chairs want to know when the criminal prosecutions will begin:

In an unprecedented breach, the Air Force improperly released to a research firm tied to Democrats’ congressional campaign arm the confidential personnel files of eleven members of the military, including one involving a retired lieutenant colonel running for office as a Republican that detailed how she had been sexually assaulted in the Air Force, Congress has been told.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer are demanding that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explain how he will prevent future breaches of military members’ private information while pressing to know if there will be criminal prosecutions. …

Rogers told Just the News much more needs to be investigated. “It’s abhorrent that a Democrat-aligned firm would do something so despicable as fraudulently obtaining service records. Chairman James Comer and I pressed the Department of Defense for answers on this egregious breach,” he said.

Solomon has a copy of the letter that went out last week to Austin. There is no indication that Austin has answered — and perhaps the belated handoff to Solomon indicates that none has yet been received. Rogers and Comer made it clear that they expect to see the DoD take action against the employees involved and against Due Diligence Group, the House Dems’ oppo-research firm. They want answers ASAP on whether any of the other files involved Republicans running for public office:

The Office of the Secretary of the Air Force (OSAF) has informed the Committee that it released 11 individuals’ records over a 14-month period from October 2021-December 2022 to a private research firm which allegedly misrepresented itself in order to obtain access to the personnel records without authorization or consent. This news comes on the heels of a prior admission by the Air Force to having inappropriately released the OMPF of former Republican Congressional candidate Jennifer-Ruth Green to the very same research firm, Due Diligence Group (DDG). 5 That disclosure served to revictimize a servicemember by releasing details about her sexual assault.6 The recent broader release of additional servicemembers’ records highlights not only the inadequacy of procedures to secure military personnel files, but also raises concerning questions of possible illicit motive or political partisanship.

This conduct by the Air Force is, at a minimum, unacceptable. The conduct by the research firm is quite possibly criminal.

It should be criminal, but I have little faith in the Department of Justice under Merrick Garland. Under his leadership, the DoJ tried to treat parents dissenting at school board meetings as a “domestic terrorism” threat, while failing to enforce existing federal law against demonstrations at the homes of Supreme Court justices — even after an assassination attempt targeting Brett Kavanaugh got thwarted by an alert security detail. Can you imagine Garland initiating a criminal probe of a House Dem oppo-research group even if they did break federal law in getting these records? Neither can I.

The best that Rogers and Comer can do is to expose the malfeasance. In that effort, the two have sent a demand list to Austin with a deadline of next Monday. They want to see the names and records of the other ten former service members to match them up to candidate lists for last year, which means they strongly suspect that they’ll match up more than just Green. Rogers and Comer want a full report on any disciplinary actions already given to the DoD employees who participated in this breach, and they particularly want to know whether the Air Force itself has any criminal probe underway.

Those seem like pretty good questions, under the circumstances. And if Austin can’t or won’t answer them, then we can get a pretty good idea what the truth is.

Update: I initially had a photo of the wrong Mike Rogers in the post. I have replaced it with a photo of James Comer instead. Thanks to Twitter reader JP for pointing out the error.