The Justice Department’s watchdog released a report on the FBI’s “culture of unauthorized media contacts” in 2016, revealing investigators failed to identify FBI leakers from the 2016 presidential campaign while casting doubt on the FBI’s evidence that Rudy Giuliani was leaked to.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report was about a “broader investigation into unauthorized disclosures” related to the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s improper email server during her run against former President Donald Trump.
He determined “dozens of other FBI employees had contact with certain members of the news media who had reported on non-public information about ongoing criminal investigations during the relevant time periods in 2016.”
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The DOJ watchdog said his office is referring six employees to the bureau to determine if they warrant disciplinary action.
The watchdog note that leads about a “substantial” number of FBI employees made it “exceedingly difficult, absent an admission, to determine whether any of these FBI employees had in fact disclosed non-public information.”
Ultimately, Horowitz said his investigation “did not ultimately result in the identification of the source(s) of the alleged unauthorized disclosures of non-public information described in the 2016 pre-election report.”
Horowitz said the FBI provided records indicating 52 bureau employees had been in contact with “relevant reporters” in April and May 2016, while 33 employees of the FBI used government devices to communicate with reporters in October 2016.
The DOJ watchdog interviewed 56 FBI employees and said, “The employees all denied providing non-public information related to ongoing criminal investigations to the reporters.” The DOJ watchdog noted that dozens of employees had access to the information and that FBI employees could have leaked to reporters in person or on personal devices.
Horowitz said his investigation was hampered when the FBI informed his office that “a gap in its text message data collection affected the FBI’s ability to comply with the OIG’s request for text messages for four of the identified individuals.” The DOJ watchdog’s office took possession of the phones assigned to the four FBI employees and recovered text messages from early 2017, but the FBI “could not locate” other previously assigned devices “which would have had text messages for the relevant time periods in 2016” — and so Horowitz “was unable to review the 2016 text messages for four of the employees identified by senior FBI witnesses as being potential sources of disclosures of non-public information in 2016.”
Horowitz revealed during Senate testimony in December 2019 that he was also looking into the possibility that FBI agents had improperly leaked information to Giuliani in 2016. The former Trump lawyer has denied being leaked FBI info in 2016.
Giuliani had been asked about Trump’s campaign and told Fox News on Oct. 26, 2016, that “I think he’s got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days.”
Two days later, then FBI Director James Comey informed Congress that the FBI was reopening the Clinton email investigation.
Giuliani subsequently said on the radio: “The other rumor that I get is that there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI about the original conclusion being completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI’s integrity. I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.”
Horowitz said Giuliani appeared for a voluntary interview with his office and told the watchdog he had not received any information about any ongoing FBI investigations, specifically saying Comey’s statements were a “shock.”
Giuliani also “said he had not been in contact with any active FBI agents in October 2016, and stated he had only spoken with former agents who did not have any direct or indirect knowledge of FBI investigations in October 2016.” Giuliani told Horowitz that his use of the term “active” referred to retired FBI agents “still actively working in security and consulting.”
The DOJ watchdog said they looked into “the prospect” that FBI employees may have leaked to Giuliani “by requesting that the FBI determine which employees, if any, had been in contact with Giuliani using their FBI-issued devices during the period of January 2016 to May 2017.”
Horowitz said the bureau identified four bureau employees it believed had been in contact with Giuliani, but all of them denied they had done so. The FBI told Horowitz it “had determined that the employees had used their FBI devices to contact telephone numbers attributed to Giuliani” but Horowitz’s office “determined that the numbers used by the FBI were for the general telephone line for the New York office of the law firm at which Giuliani was a partner during the relevant time frames, and two other general telephone lines for businesses at which Giuliani had not been affiliated since at least 2007.”
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Horowitz’s June 2018 report “identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters” in 2016. Horowitz’s office said then it had also “identified instances where FBI employees improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events” — issues Horowitz noted on Thursday that it had released investigative summaries on in 2018, 2019, and last month.
