DOJ Misled Courts In Applications To Abet Snooping On Lawmakers, Staffers As Russiagate Played Out

Department of Justice (DOJ) personnel misled courts in applications for gag orders that prevented dozens of elected lawmakers and Congressional staffers from being notified that the government was spying on them as the Russiagate hoax played out, according to the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

In 2017 and 2018, the DOJ obtained data of two members of Congress and 43 staffers, as well as several reporters, in an effort to identify the source of leaks of classified information about the Trump-Russia investigation to Congress and the press, representing a more extensive effort than was previously understood, according to a report published Tuesday by the DOJ OIG. In applications to courts to secure gag orders that would prevent third-party companies from informing targets of the surveillance that the government had obtained their information, the DOJ did not reference “the fact that they related to requests for records of Members of Congress or congressional staffers.”

The DOJ secured 40 of these gag orders, known officially as “non-disclosure orders” (NDOs), with most of them being renewed at least once, according to the OIG report. Some of the NDOs were in effect for up to four years.

DOJ OIG Report by Nick Pope on Scribd

That DOJ sought to obtain the records of lawmakers and staffers in the first place “implicated the constitutional rights and authorities of a co-equal branch of government”and “exposes congressional officials to having their records reviewed by the Department solely for conducting Congress’s constitutionally authorized oversight duties and creating, at a minimum, the appearance of inappropriate interference by the executive branch in legitimate oversight activity by the legislative branch,” the OIG wrote.

Moreover, when DOJ filed applications and renewal requests for the NDOs to keep surveillance targets in the dark, the department generally did not present case-specific reasons for the gag orders, instead using generic “boilerplate statements” to describe the need for the gag orders, according to the OIG report. In fact, the DOJ did not bother to tell the courts that the NDOs would apply to sitting members of Congress or their staffers, and the courts went ahead with approvals.

“DOJ policy in effect at the time did not require the NDOs filed with the courts to reference, and they did not reference, the fact that they related to requests for records of Members of Congress or congressional staffers,” the OIG wrote in its report.

Both of the sitting lawmakers surveilled by the DOJ were Democrats, according to the OIG report. Of the 43 staffers targeted, 21 worked for Democrats, 20 worked for Republicans and two worked in non-partisan roles.

One of the staffers targeted by the DOJ’s surveillance was Kash Patel, who served at the time as senior counsel on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for then-Chair Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, according to CNN, which cited anonymous sources familiar with the matter. Patel — recently nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to run the FBI — helped dig up information that Nunes took public in 2018 with a memo that suggested federal law enforcement officials had abused surveillance courts to spy on 2016 Trump campaign Carter Page, snooping that turned out to be instrumental to the since-discredited allegation that Trump colluded illicitly with the Russian government.

The OIG stated that DOJ has since revised its policies to require that the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section and the U.S. Attorney first approve efforts to compel information about sitting lawmakers and their staffs, or pursue any NDOs related to that process.

However, the change is not nearly good enough in the eyes of Jason Foster, who served as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chief investigative counsel under Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley before founding Empower Oversight, a government transparency and accountability organization.

“The notion that DOJ reformed its process since getting caught is laughable. So now DOJ has to ask a bureaucrat in the Public Integrity Section for permission to secretly collect congressional comms records?” Foster wrote in a Tuesday post to X, formerly Twitter. “Big deal. Who will be held accountable for misleading the court?”

The DOJ did not respond immediately to a request for comment.