Cries of “Worse than Watergate” quickly followed Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley’s (R-Iowa) revelation from a whistleblower within the FBI that eight Republican senators and a House GOPer had been illegally spied upon during the Biden administration’s failed prosecutions of then-former President Donald Trump.

Grassley called Arctic Frost “arguably worse than Watergate” during his opening remarks at an October 6 committee hearing, a cry that was quickly echoed by multiple GOP senators. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the emerging scandal during the hearing, and Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) warned that the FBI targets may well be “suing the hell out of the Department of Justice and the individuals involved.”

Subsequent investigation and revelations may indeed confirm that Arctic Frost was an even more profoundly serious constitutional violation than the Watergate scandal in which President Richard Nixon and members of his inner circle sought to cover up their knowledge of a “third-rate burglary” of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 election campaign.

But when viewed in a wider context, Arctic Frost should not come as a surprise to anybody for the simple reason that every Democratic president during the 21st century — including Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — has weaponized tax and law enforcement resources of the federal government against Republicans, conservatives, and Christians.

During the Clinton era (1993-2001), the White House staff produced a 331-page report in 1995 entitled “The Communication Streams of Conspiracy Commerce” that argued multiple conservative political figures, think tanks, and media outlets were all part of a conspiracy to discredit the president. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton famously described the groups as “a vast right-wing conspiracy.”

In the months after the report became public, multiple conservative groups, including most notably the Heritage Foundation think tank and Citizens Against Government Waste, found themselves being subjected to intense tax audits by the IRS. When no complaints about similar IRS audits were heard from liberal groups, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation convened an investigation that led to passage by Congress in 1998 of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act to prevent such abuses.

Barack Obama was the next Democrat elected to the Oval Office in 2008 and then re-elected in 2012. His administration also used the IRS against groups perceived to be political enemies, but rather than harassing audits, the tax agency found multiple ways to slow-walk tax-exemption applications submitted by conservative, Tea Party, and evangelical Christian groups.

The IRS effort was centered in its Cincinnati regional office, but direction came from the tax agency’s headquarters in the nation’s capital from then-IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner. The scandal prompted multiple congressional hearings, and Lerner was found in contempt of Congress.

Then-House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) explained that “the Oversight Committee upheld its obligation to pursue the truth about the IRS targeting of Americans because of their political beliefs. Our investigation has found that former IRS Exempt Organizations division Director Lois Lerner played a central role in the targeting scandal and then failed to meet her legal obligations to answer questions after she waived her right not to testify.”

Lerner’s criminal contempt citation was upheld by the full House of Representatives and referred to the Department of Justice, which opted not to take Lerner to court in the matter.

Another Obama-era example of weaponization of government against perceived opposition could generate renewed attention as a result of Arctic Frost because it involved CIA agents breaking into the computer system of the Senate Intelligence Committee and spying on committee staffers.

Then-CIA Director John Brennan apologized to the committee after initially insisting no such illegal activities had taken place because doing so would be “beyond reason.” Senator Diane Feinstein, the California Democrat who chaired the intel panel, told the Senate after receiving Brennan’s apology that “the investigation confirmed what I said on the Senate floor in March — CIA personnel inappropriately searched Senate Intelligence Committee computers in violation of an agreement we had reached, and, I believe, in violation of the constitutional separation of powers.”

Not long after the Senate intel controversy, Brennan was deeply involved in the Obama administration’s manufacturing of false intelligence reports designed to discredit Trump after he defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. The false reports claimed Trump was elected in part with assistance from President Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence assets.

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in a July 23 news release:

“The ODNI records released on Friday, Senator Chuck Grassley’s release on Monday of the appendix to the DOJ OIG’s June 2018 report known as the ‘Clinton annex,’ and the HPSCI oversight report released today confirm a treasonous conspiracy led by President Obama and his national security team, including James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey, to manipulate and manufacture intelligence that promoted a contrived false narrative falsely claiming: ‘Putin aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances, when possible, by discrediting Secretary Clinton.’

“President Obama directed the creation of this January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment after President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and it served as the basis for what was essentially a years-long coup against the duly elected President of the United States, subverting the will of the American people and attempting to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidency.”

A federal grand jury recently indicted Comey on two charges, one of lying to Congress and the other of obstructing a congressional investigation into matters related to the Trump-Russia allegations.

Obama was followed in 2020 by his former vice president, Joe Biden, whose four years in the Oval Office were marred by scandal after scandal in which the Department of Justice, the FBI, intelligence agencies, and other departments of government were turned against individuals and groups perceived by White House officials as opponents.

Those included multiple Republican and conservative organizations, including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, prosecutions of Catholic pro-life demonstrators for praying in front of abortion facilities, investigations of parents protesting “woke” educational policies at public school board meetings, and the multiple prosecutions of Trump, including the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, compound in which agents conspicuously went through Melania Trump’s underwear drawer in search of classified documents that weren’t there.

Now that Trump is back in the White House, Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) repeatedly blast the 47th president, as in this recent statement claiming “he has turned this judicial system to be his own political fighter, do what he wants politically, so that he tells them to go after people he doesn’t like, he tells them to exonerate people that he likes.”

Such assertions by Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media, the academic and corporate communities about Trump “weaponizing” the Department of Justice by investigating Arctic Frost should be viewed in the context of this background of politicized actions by every Democratic president of the 21st century.