Watchdog Raises Concerns Over Leaked Investigations of Trump-Era Journalists and Congressmen

A government watchdog raised concerns Tuesday about the handling of leak investigations during the first Trump administration that targeted members of Congress and the media, although it found no evidence that the investigations were politically motivated. according to a recently published report.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz opened the investigation after public reports that prosecutors during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term obtained warrants to access communications records of members of the Congress, congressional staff and journalists from CNN, the New York Times and Washington. Publication aimed at identifying sources of apparent leaks of classified information.

The investigations were not made public until after Trump left office, in part because prosecutors had obtained court orders blocking lawmakers, their staff and members of the media from learning about the searches.

Although his name is not mentioned directly in the report, Kash Patel, Trump’s choice for FBI director, was among the members of Congress at the time of the investigation into the Trump-era leaks whose files were searched, confirmed a source close to the investigation.

Patel has also stated publicly on several occasions that he was under investigation by Trump’s DOJ and had also been informed by Google that the DOJ had searched information on his personal accounts.

The report, released as Trump threatened action against his political rivals and the media through the DOJ and FBI, reveals that the scope of leak investigations involving members of Congress and their staffs was far more wider than previous reports suggested.

Representative Eric Swalwell and now Senator. Adam Schiff, both Democrats from California, previously revealed that their records had been seized as part of the investigation. Horowitz’s report found that prosecutors also searched the records of 43 other people who were congressional staffers at the time the leaked information was released.

But Horowitz’s report noted that the staffers’ partisan affiliation was not unbalanced: 21 staffers whose records were viewed were Democrats, 20 were Republicans and two held nonpartisan positions. The inspector general’s investigation determined that the basis for the search of the staffers’ records was entirely due to their known ability to access documents that had been leaked to the press, while investigations into Schiff, then congressman, and Swalwell were initially strengthened. by information provided to the department by an unidentified committee member who suspected them of leaking – but provided no evidence to support those claims.

Horowitz’s report expressed concerns about congressional leak investigations, largely related to the lack of existing policies within the DOJ to provide high-level oversight over such investigations that involve the separation of powers. Records reviewed by Horowitz indicate that investigations into members of Congress were conducted by career prosecutors almost entirely without high-level oversight or notification and that there was no evidence that they were pressured to conduct investigations despite Trump and other Republicans repeatedly singling out Schiff and Swalwell. as possible escapees.

According to Horowitz, the fact that the department was able to conduct its sweeping investigation of members of Congress and their staffs solely on the basis of their access to the disclosed information “risks crippling Congress’s ability to exercise oversight over the executive branch, because it exposes congressional officials to having their records reviewed by the Department solely to carry out constitutionally authorized congressional oversight functions.

As for investigations into Trump-era leaks involving journalists at CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Horowitz found that department officials violated several policies that existed when the attorney general At the time, William Barr authorized the investigations. Prosecutors failed to convene a news media review board that would normally be consulted in investigations into leaks to members of the media, and in one of the investigations they failed to managed to gain approval from the director of national intelligence, according to the report.

After the media leak investigations were disclosed in 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland convened several meetings with newsroom executives in Washington, D.C., and ultimately implemented a new DOJ policy that prohibits prosecutors from obtain search warrants for journalists’ files to obtain information about their sources.

The future of this policy remains highly uncertain, however – given public comments from Trump and his top allies suggesting they fully intend to use the powers of the DOJ and FBI to target political enemies and even possibly members of the media during the crisis. his second term. Although Horowitz’s report offered several recommendations for internal policy fixes to the problems identified in the report, all of which were accepted by Biden’s DOJ, it will be up to the leadership of Trump’s new DOJ to determine whether these recommendations will be implemented.