DOJ officials may have tried to influence 2020 election for Trump, watchdog says By Reuters
By Brad Heath and Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three senior U.S. Justice Department officials committed misconduct in the final months of Donald Trump’s first term as president by leaking details of a non-public investigation, a move that may have been aimed at influencing the 2020 election, the department’s internal watchdog concluded in new report.
Reuters obtained the December report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz through a public records request. The report found that officials inappropriately shared with two media outlets details of the department’s plans to collect data on deaths from COVID-19 at nursing homes located in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan, four states with Democratic governors who came under criticism for their handling of the pandemic.
The leak “will be our last game with them before the election, but it’s a big one,” one of the officials wrote in a text obtained by investigators.
The report did not name the employees, although one of them worked in the Department of Justice’s public affairs office. They no longer work in the department, according to the Office of the Inspector General.
“The conduct of these senior officials has raised serious questions about the party’s political motivations for their actions in the immediate vicinity of the 2020 election,” Horowitz wrote.
Bill Barr, who was attorney general at the time and was not 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, is a frequent critic of what he has described as the politicization of American police.
Without providing evidence, Trump accused the Justice Department of unfairly targeting him in two separate criminal investigations related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified documents after he left office in January 2021.
The Justice Department has since dropped both cases, citing its longstanding policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the nonprofit Public Citizen, said the politically motivated behavior described in the report represents the same kind of behavior that Trump and his allies have alleged engaged in by the Justice Department under President Joe Biden.
They accused those who persecuted the former president for his crimes of election denial and rebellion as partisans, and at the same time they did such things, she said.
Trump’s transition spokesman could not be reached for comment.
NURSING HOME PROBE
Federal prosecutors began investigating nursing home deaths in mid-2020 as the pandemic cut 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 issued orders requiring the homes to accept COVID patients.
The inspector general concluded that Trump administration officials directed attorneys to “focus specifically on New Jersey and New York despite being provided with data showing that the nursing homes with the most significant quality of care problems are in other states.”
In October 2020, department officials sent letters to the governors of New York and New Jersey asking for more information about nursing home deaths. The inspector general said officials delivered the letters to the New York Post before they reached the governor, and that another official spoke to the newspaper anonymously. This, the report says, violated the ministry’s policy that limits contacts with the press.
The official also disclosed the details to the Wall Street Journal, according to the report.
The report concludes that “the upcoming 2020 election may have been a factor in the timing and manner” in which prosecutors conducted the nursing home investigation and officials’ decision to make those steps public.
The special counsel’s office, which oversees rules that generally prohibit federal workers from participating in party politics in their official capacity, is reviewing the report, a spokesman said.
