Report flags Trump DOJ officials' action
Watchdog sees possible efforts to sway 2020 vote
By: Brad Heath
and Sarah N. Lynch
Reuters
WASHINGTON -Three senior U.S Justice Department officials committed misconduct in the final months of Donald Trump's first presidency by leaking details about a nonpublic investigation, a move that may have been intended to sway the 2020 election, the department's internal watchdog concluded in a new report.
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Reuters obtained the December [2024] report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz through a public records request. The report found the officials improperly shared details with two media outlets about the department's pans to collect data on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes located in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan, four stats with Democratic governors who had come under fire for their handling of the pandemic.
..... The leak "will be our last play on them before the election but it's big one," one of the official wrote in a text obtained by investigators.
..... The report did not identify the employees, through one of them worked in the Justice Department's public affairs office. They no longer work at the department, according to the inspector general's office.
..... "The conduct of these senior officials raised serious questions about the partisan political motivations for their actions in proximity to the 2020 election," Horowitz wrote.
..... Bill Barr, who was attorney general at the time and wasn't accused of any wrongdoing in the report, could not be reached for comment.
..... President-elect Trump, who will return to the White House on January 20, [2205] is a frequent critic of what he has described as the politicization of U.S. law enforcement. Without proving evidence, Trump has accused the Justice Department of unfairly targeting him in two criminal probes related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified documents after leaving office in January 2021.
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The Justice Department has since dropped both cases, citing its longstanding policy that prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.
..... Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the nonprofit Public Citizen, said the politically motivated behavior described in the report represents the same type of conduct Trump and his allies have alleged the Justice Department under President Joe Biden engage in.
..... "They accused those prosecuting the former president for his crimes around election denial and the insurrection as partisan, and simultaneous, they were doing things like this," she said.
..... Federal prosecutors began looking at deaths in nursing homes in the middle of 2020, as the panic was cutting a deadly path through some facilities.
..... The review focused on facilities in New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all of which had democratic governors who had issued orders requiring the homes to accept COVID patients.
..... the inspector general concluded that Trump administration officials instructed attorneys to "focus specifically on New jersey and New York despite having been provided data indicating that the nursing homes with the most significant quality of care issues were in other states."
..... In October 202, department officials sent letters to the governors of New York and New jersey seeking more information about nursing home deaths. The inspector general said the officials provided the letters to the New York Post before they reached the governors, and that another official spoke anonymously to the newspaper. that, the report said, violate the department's polices limiting contacts with the press.