A senior administration official raised concerns Tuesday about the Trump administration’s handling of leak investigations into members of Congress and the media, despite finding no evidence the probes were politically motivated. according to a recently published report.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz launched the investigation when prosecutors announced that, during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, he had obtained warrants to access the communications records of members of Congress, congressional staffers and CNN, New York Times and Washington reporters. Publish to identify sources of apparent leaks of classified information.
The investigations were not made public after Trump left office, partly because prosecutors obtained court orders preventing lawmakers, their staff and the media from learning about the searches.
President-elect Donald Trump meets with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Elysee Palace on December 7, 2024 in Paris.
Aurelien Morissard/AP
Although his name is not directly mentioned in the report, Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI directorHe was among the congressional staffers whose records were sought during the Trump-era leak investigation, a source familiar with the investigation confirmed.
Patel has also publicly said on multiple occasions that Trump was investigated by the DOJ and was also informed by Google that the DOJ sought information about his personal accounts.
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel, leaves a meeting with Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn in Washington, Dec. 9, 2024.
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The report, which comes as Trump did He threatened to take action against his political rivals and the media Through the DOJ and FBI, it reveals the scope of the leak investigations against members of Congress and their staff was much broader than previous reports had suggested.
Eric Swalwell MP and now-Sen. Adam SchiffThe two California Democrats, who previously revealed that their records were seized as part of the investigation, Horowitz’s report revealed that prosecutors also searched the records of 43 other congressional staffers at the time the leaked information was released.
But Horowitz’s report indicated that the workers’ partisan affiliation was not disproportionate — 21 of the workers surveyed were Democrats, 20 were Republicans and two worked in nonpartisan positions. The Inspector General’s investigation determined that the basis of the records of the employees being searched was entirely due to the known ability to access materials leaked to the press, and initially intensified investigations into Schiff, then a congressman, and Swalwell. An unidentified commission employee suspected leaks based on information provided to the department, but did not provide evidence to back up the claims.
Sen.-elect Adam Schiff of California attends a meeting of newly elected Democratic senators with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in his office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Nov. 12, 2024.
Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images
Horowitz’s report raised concerns about congressional leak investigations, largely related to the lack of high-level oversight of investigations involving the separation of powers in place at the DOJ. According to records reviewed by Horowitz, the investigations into members of Congress were conducted almost entirely by career prosecutors without senior oversight or notification and there was no evidence that they were pressured into conducting the inquiries despite Trump and other Republicans repeatedly singled out Schiff and Swalwell. as a possible filter.
According to Horowitz, the department’s extensive investigation of members of Congress and their staff only because they had access to leaked information “runs the risk of chilling Congress’s ability to oversee the executive branch. Congressional officials are exposing their records to the Department for review by Congress as a form of constitutionally authorized oversight.” just for doing the job.”
Regarding the Trump-era leak investigations of reporters from CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Horowitz found that department officials violated several policies in place at the time Attorney General William Barr authorized the investigations. Prosecutors did not convene the News Review Board, which would normally consult members of the media during the leak investigation process, and failed to obtain approval from the director of national intelligence for one of the investigations, according to the report.
In 2021, after the news media leak investigation was revealed, Attorney General Merrick Garland held several meetings with newsroom leaders in Washington, ultimately establishing a new DOJ policy that prevents prosecutors from securing warrants to search reporters’ records to obtain information about their sources.
The future of that policy, however, remains highly uncertain – given the public comments made by Trump and his key allies Suggesting that they intend to fully exercise the powers of the DOJ and the FBI to target political and possibly media enemies in his second term. While Horowitz’s report offered several recommendations for fixing the domestic policies identified in the report, all of which were accepted by the Biden DOJ, it will be. Trump DOJ leadership to determine whether these recommendations will be implemented.
