周二，一家政府高级监管机构对特朗普第一届政府期间针对国会成员和媒体的泄密调查的处理表示担忧，尽管没有证据表明这些调查是出于政治动机。根据一份新发布的报告.
在公开报道称，在当选总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)的第一个任期内，检察官获得了查阅国会议员、国会工作人员以及美国有线电视新闻网(CNN)、《纽约时报》(New York Times)和《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)记者通信记录的授权令，以确定机密信息明显泄露的来源后，司法部监察长迈克尔·霍罗威兹启动了调查。
这些调查直到特朗普离任后才公开披露，部分原因是检察官获得了法院命令，阻止立法者、其工作人员和媒体成员了解搜查情况。
虽然报告中没有直接提到他的名字，川普挑选的美国联邦调查局导演一位熟悉调查的消息人士证实，在特朗普时代的泄密调查期间，他是国会工作人员之一，其记录被搜查。
帕特尔还在多个场合公开表示，他受到特朗普的DOJ的调查，谷歌也告知他，DOJ曾寻求他的个人账户信息。
这份报告是特朗普发表的威胁要对他的政治对手和媒体采取行动通过DOJ和美国联邦调查局，揭露了对国会议员及其工作人员的泄密调查的范围比以前的报告所显示的要广泛得多。
众议员埃里克·斯瓦尔韦尔和现在-参议员亚当·希夫Horowitz的报告显示，检察官还搜查了43名在泄露信息公布时担任国会工作人员的其他人的记录。
但霍洛维茨的报告指出，工作人员的党派归属并不不平衡——21名记录被搜查的工作人员是民主党人，20名是共和党人，还有两名在无党派职位上工作。监察长的调查确定的基础，工作人员的记录被搜查，完全是因为他们已知的能力，以获取材料，被发现泄漏给新闻界，而调查希夫，然后国会议员，和Swalwell最初是支持的信息给该部门的一名身份不明的委员会工作人员谁怀疑他们泄漏-但没有提供证据来支持索赔。
霍洛维茨的报告表达了对国会泄密调查的担忧，这在很大程度上与DOJ缺乏对此类涉及分权的调查进行高级别监督的现有政策有关。霍洛维茨查阅的记录显示，对国会议员的调查是由职业检察官进行的，几乎完全没有高层监督或通知，没有证据表明他们受到压力进行调查，尽管特朗普和其他共和党人一再挑出希夫和斯瓦尔韦尔作为可能的泄密者。
根据霍洛维茨的说法，该部能够对国会议员及其工作人员进行全面调查，仅仅是因为他们能够获得泄露的信息，“有可能削弱国会对行政部门进行监督的能力，因为这使国会官员暴露在该部审查其记录的情况下，只是因为他们履行了国会宪法授权的监督职责。”
至于特朗普时代对美国有线电视新闻网(CNN)、《纽约时报》(New York Times)和《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)记者的泄密调查，霍洛维茨发现，该部门的官员违反了当时存在的几项政策——司法部长威廉·巴尔授权进行调查。根据该报告，检察官未能召集一个新闻媒体审查委员会，该委员会通常会在调查向媒体成员泄密的过程中被征求意见，在其中一项调查中，检察官未能获得国家情报总监的批准。
在2021年披露新闻媒体泄密调查后，司法部长梅里克·加兰(Merrick Garland)与华盛顿特区的新闻编辑室负责人召开了几次会议，并最终实施了新的DOJ政策，禁止检察官获得对记者记录的搜查令，以获取有关其来源的信息。
然而，鉴于特朗普及其顶级盟友的公开评论，这项政策的未来仍然很成问题暗示他们完全打算利用DOJ和美国联邦调查局的力量在他的第二个任期内瞄准政敌甚至可能是媒体成员。虽然霍洛维茨的报告对报告中确定的问题提出了几项内部政策修正建议，这些建议都被拜登DOJ接受，但这将取决于即将上任的川普·DOJ的领导力以确定这些建议是否会得到实施。
Watchdog raises concerns over Trump-era leak probes of reporters, members of Congress
A top government watchdog raised concerns Tuesday over the handling of leak investigations during the first Trump administration that targeted members of Congress and the media despite finding no evidence that the inquiries were politically motivated,according to a newly released report.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz initiated the investigation after public reports that prosecutors, during President-elect Donald Trump's first term, had obtained warrants to access communications records for members of Congress, congressional staffers and reporters at CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post to identify sources of apparent leaks of classified information.
The investigations were not publicly disclosed until after Trump left office, in part because prosecutors had secured court orders that prevented lawmakers, their staff and media members from learning about the searches.
While his name is not mentioned directly in the report, Kash Patel,Trump's pick for FBI director, was among the congressional staffers at the time of the Trump-era leak probe whose records were searched, a source familiar with the investigation confirmed.
Patel has also said publicly on multiple occasions that he was subject to investigation by Trump's DOJ and was also informed by Google that the DOJ had sought information on his personal accounts.
The report, which comes as Trump hasthreatened to take action against his political rivals and the mediathrough the DOJ and FBI, reveals the scope of the leak investigations into members of Congress and their staff was much broader than previous reports suggested.
Rep. Eric Swalwell andnow-Sen. Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, previously revealed their records had been seized as part of the investigation, Horowitz's report revealed prosecutors also searched the records of 43 others who were congressional staffers at the time the leaked information was published.
But Horowitz's report noted that the partisan affiliation of the staffers was not imbalanced -- 21 staffers whose records were searched were Democrats, 20 were Republicans, and two worked in nonpartisan positions. The inspector general investigation determined the basis for the staffers' records being searched was entirely due to their known ability to access the materials that were found to be leaked to the press, while the investigations into Schiff, then a congressman, and Swalwell were initially bolstered by information given to the department by an unidentified committee staffer who suspected them of leaking -- but provided no evidence to support the claims.
Horowitz's report expressed concerns regarding the congressional leak investigations largely related to a lack of existing policies at the DOJ to provide senior-level oversight over such investigations that implicate the separation of powers. Records reviewed by Horowitz said the inquiries into members of Congress were conducted by career prosecutors almost entirely without senior-level supervision or notification and that there was no evidence they were pressured to carry out the inquiries despite Trump and other Republicans repeatedly singling out Schiff and Swalwell as possible leakers.
According to Horowitz, that the department was able to carry out its sweeping investigation of the members of Congress and their staff solely on the basis of them having had access to the leaked information "risks chilling Congress's ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch because it exposes congressional officials to having their records reviewed by the Department solely for conducting Congress's constitutionally authorized oversight duties."
As for the Trump-era leak investigations of reporters from CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Horowitz found that officials in the department violated several policies that existed at the time then-Attorney General William Barr authorized the investigations. Prosecutors failed to convene a News Media Review Committee that would normally be consulted in the process of investigations of leaks to members of the media and, in one of the investigations, failed to obtain approval from the director of national intelligence, according to the report.
Upon disclosure of the news media leak investigations in 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland convened several meetings with newsroom leaders across Washington, D.C., and ultimately implemented new DOJ policy that bars prosecutors from securing search warrants for reporters' records to obtain information about their sources.
The future of that policy, however, remains very much in question -- given public comments by Trump and his top alliessuggesting they fully intend to use the powers of the DOJ and the FBIto target political enemies and even possibly members of the media during his second term. While Horowitz's report offered up several recommendations for internal policy fixes to the issued identified in the report, all of which were accepted by the Biden DOJ, it will be up toleadership in the incoming Trump DOJto determine whether those recommendations will be implemented.
