The Department of Justice Inspector General found no evidence of retaliatory or political motivation in Donald Trump’s Department of Justice’s use of subpoenas to obtain records from members of Congress, their staff and journalists during leak investigations.
However, the review of the Department of Justice’s actions highlights oversight deficiencies and the need for safeguards to prevent future misuse of such investigative tools.
The report was released 41 days before Trump is set to take office a second time and follows revelations that the DOJ subpoenaed records of Congress members, their staff, and media members and then issued non-disclosure orders to prevent members from learning of the methods used to obtain these reports.
The report scrutinized the leak investigations launched by the Trump Justice Department in 2017 and 2018 and the practices used during the first Trump administration, including the secret seizure of data and metadata, which focused on finding out how eight journalists from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CNN obtained classified information.
The investigations began when The Washington Post reported in 2017 on a meeting between Russia’s then-ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak and Trump campaign adviser, Jeff Sessions, regarding Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, fueling the rumor of Trump-Russia ties that clung to his 2016 campaign.
The department’s Office of Inspector General stated in the report that records were subpoenaed from two Democratic Congress members and 43 staffers when the articles were published. Twenty-one of the staffers held Democratic positions, 20 held Republican positions, and two held nonpartisan positions.
The report said that all members of Congress and their staff who accessed the classified information did so due to their job responsibilities.
The DOJ found no evidence of retaliatory or political motivation and stated that obtaining the records solely based on proximity in time between access to the information and the time of publication “risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in his 91-page report.
Horowitz said a staffer with “uncertain credibility” had identified members of Congress “without providing any evidentiary support for the claim.”
A new Congressional Investigations Policy requires DOJ prosecutors to obtain the Public Integrity Section’s approval before issuing a compulsory process.
PIN oversees the investigation and prosecution of all federal crimes affecting government integrity, including bribery of public officials, election crimes, and other related offenses.
The report continued that the subpoenas had created at least the “appearance of inappropriate interference” by the department into the inner working of Congress. There were a total of four secret investigations, all of which were closed without criminal charges.
