Just when it seems the full extent of former President Donald Trump's authoritarian instincts are known, a new and more shocking example arises. The revelation that Trump's Justice Department secretly subpoenaed the phone and computer records of two top congressional Democrats, and the staff and family around them, should send chills up the spine of anyone who understands the urgency of America's constitutional separation of powers.

The probe was ostensibly an investigation into leaked classified material, but that's a thin veneer for abuse of power, given the details — including the fact that Trump's ever-servile second attorney general, William Barr, revived the investigation a year after his predecessor's office had found nothing. A full congressional review of this disturbing executive overreach is warranted.

Trump was obsessed from the start with the special counsel's investigation into his ties with Russia, and he was infuriated that information about that probe was leaked to the news media. The New York Times reported last week that, in February 2018, Trump's Justice Department launched an extraordinary campaign to find the leaks. It included the virtually unprecedented step of secretly gathering metadata from the accounts of at least two members of Congress, their staffs and family members.

The administration obtained the records via subpoenas of Apple, while also securing a gag order to prevent the tech company from telling the targets their data was being collected by the government. The targets included a minor.

Leaking classified information is a serious issue, but evidence abounds that this was, at its core, the use of the presidency to improperly persecute the president's political enemies. Among those whose data was secretly collected was Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., one of Trump's most vociferous critics and a frequent target of his public attacks.

The initial data probe apparently turned up no evidence that Schiff or any other target had leaked information, since the investigation stopped while Jeff Sessions, Trump's first attorney general, was still in office. Sessions had recused himself from the Russia investigation and reportedly wasn't personally involved in the secret collection of data, meaning underlings at his office undertook it. Given Trump's bellicose public demands for protection by his own Justice Department, it strains belief that he didn't influence that decision.

The most damning aspect of the story came a year later, after Barr had been installed as attorney general. Barr's repeated, shameless abuse of his office to serve Trump's political needs has been well documented, but this may eclipse it all. In a move that made no sense except as a political persecution, Barr ordered the data-collection probe reopened, despite the dead end it had hit before he took office.

As president, Trump tore through one political norm after another, but using the Justice Department to secretly collect the data of congressional critics is dangerous new territory even for him. Congress should conduct a thorough investigation into this matter and consider legislation restricting future presidents' ability to abuse their power this way.

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