During the first Trump administration, the Justice Department launched four sprawling leak investigations that ultimately targeted two Democrats in Congress, dozens of congressional staffers from both parties, and eight reporters at three national outlets, as described in a report from the top DOJ watchdog on Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s inspector general found prosecutors never notified courts that they were seeking email and phone records for sitting members of Congress and their aides. The DOJ also did not follow its own rules around spying on journalists, according to the report.

The report is a grim reminder that agency rules are ineffective to check abuses.

With Trump weeks away from returning to the White House and packing the DOJ and FBI with loyalists, the report is a grim reminder that agency rules are ineffective to check abuses, especially when the rules themselves are unclear or leave considerable discretion to individual prosecutors about whether and how they apply.

“The Inspector General’s revelations are beyond disturbing,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in an emailed statement. “It is particularly concerning that the Department of Justice hoodwinked a judge into signing off on secret surveillance on both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.”

“As these abuses demonstrate, there are few guardrails preventing a lone prosecutor or the Attorney General, the Department of Justice or even state or local law enforcement from spying on Congress and threatening our constitutional system of checks and balances,” Wyden said.

Press freedom advocates were disturbed but not surprised at the inspector general’s findings. Seth Stern, advocacy director at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said Congress needs to step in and protect journalists and their sources through legislation like the PRESS Act, which has been sitting in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives unanimously in early 2024.

“We don’t need to waste ink on years-late 100-page reports to confirm that the DOJ disregards these policies at its whim. We already know that,” Stern told The Intercept. “We need to pass the PRESS Act.”

Investigating Members of Congress

The report offers a detailed but anonymized account of four leak investigations, which were all launched in 2017 under Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and continued under his........

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