WASHINGTON –Senate Majority Whip Dick
Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman and ranking member
of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today requested information and an
independent inspector general review following a newly publicized 2019 audit
that revealed widespread violations of internal FBI policies governing
investigations of political candidates, public officials, religious and
political groups and other sensitive matters.
As
reported by The Washington Times,
the internal review revealed a ratio of slightly more than two rule violations
per sensitive investigative matter reviewed by FBI auditors—including agents’
failure to obtain approval from senior FBI officials to start an investigation,
failure to conduct a necessary legal review before opening an investigation,
and failure to tell prosecutors what they were doing. In light of these new
revelations, the Senators sent a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray to seek more
information on the 2019 audit, as well as a letter to the Department of Justice
(DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to request an independent review of
the FBI’s widespread violations of its Domestic Investigations and Operations
Guide (DIOG).
In the letter to FBI Director Wray, the
Senators requested an unredacted copy of the 2019 audit and a detailed
explanation of what remedial steps, if any, the FBI has taken in response to
its findings.
“These
widespread and apparently systemic violations of approval and notification
requirements make clear that the FBI has failed to rigorously adhere to the
DIOG,” Durbin and Grassley wrote. “The sheer number of FBI investigations that failed to comply with the
DIOG’s rules suggests a pattern and practice of evading the rules, which
consequently opens the door for political and other improper considerations to
infect the investigative decision-making process.”
In a letter to Inspector General Horowitz,
the Senators requested an additional audit of the FBI’s compliance with the
DIOG’s requirements for conducting sensitive investigative matters (SIMs).
“Due to the
nature of their subjects, these investigations present heightened
constitutional and civil liberties concerns and therefore merit greater
scrutiny and supervision,” Durbin and
Grassley wrote. “Accordingly, we ask that the Office of the
Inspector General (OIG) perform an additional audit of the FBI’s compliance
with the DIOG’s requirements for conducting SIMs. Among other things, the audit
should address the FBI’s compliance with relevant requirements during SIMs
pending from July 2019 to the present day, including additional SIM-related
guidance and requirements imposed by the FBI in response to OIG’s December 2019
report regarding Crossfire Hurricane.”
Full text of the letter to FBI Director
Wray is available
HERE.
Full text of the letter to Inspector
General Horowitz is available HERE.
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