Feds collected records of dozens of congressional staff, multiple reporters in Trump-era leak probes, watchdog reveals

The Justice Department failed to follow department policy and ignored some established protections when seeking records from members of Congress, dozens of congressional staffers and members of the media during the first Trump administration, an internal watchdog found.

A report by the department's Office of Inspector General released on Tuesday focused on numerous leak investigations launched by the Justice Department and the FBI between 2017 and 2020 to determine how eight journalists from the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN obtained classified information that appeared in reports. The data mostly included metadata about emails and phone calls, and did not contain the content of the communications. 

In 2017, FBI investigators honed in on members of Congress and their staff as possible sources of various news reports, eventually obtaining data from two Democratic lawmakers and 43 congressional staffers from both parties. Inspector General Michael Horowitz criticized the large number of congressional employees whose information was obtained, and urged the department to implement stronger policies to protect the data of members of Congress and their staff.