Report: Trump DOJ secretly gathered phone, text records of congressional staffers

Dec. 10 (UPI) -- The Justice Department under the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018 secretly collected phone and text message logs from 43 congressional staffers and two members of Congress during an investigation of leaked classified information, an internal watchdog said.

The department's Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in a new report that, while the DOJ did not act with political inclinations, it crossed the line in constitutional separation of powers.

Horowitz said prosecutors obtained the information through third-party providers and used gag orders to prevent those companies from notifying their customers that their records were being collected. The report highlighted that the probe into leaks was much broader than previously believed.

Horowitz's report also found that Trump's Justice Department collected phone and text records from news reporters in the same classified leak investigation.

The inspector general started the probe in 2021 after press reporters showed that then-Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both California Democrats, had their records seized in regard to the leaks.

A Democratic staffer had suspected the lawmakers of playing a role in the classified leaks, but the Justice Department eventually determined that the staffer's complaint did not have any "evidentiary support" its credibility was "uncertain."

"We did not find any evidence of retaliatory or political motivation by the career prosecutors who issued the compulsory process we reviewed," Horowitz's report said.

Of the staffers who had records access, 21 were affiliated with Democrats and 20 were connected with Republicans, including Kash Patel, who is Trump's nominee to run the FBI.