DOJ Watchdog Accused of Ignoring Trump Leaders’ Misconduct (1)

The Justice Department’s internal oversight offices have refused to pursue their traditional roles investigating senior officials at a time of unprecedented Trump-era misconduct, whistleblower attorneys told Congress in a complaint chronicling the DOJ inspector general’s inaction during political controversies.

One day after terminated DOJ supervisor Erez Reuveni asked the department’s IG to probe former top official Emil Bove and current department leaders for allegedly misleading a court and instructing employees to defy court orders, the watchdog sent a short, unsigned reply declining to open an investigation, according to the whistleblower attorneys. They outlined the actions in a letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees Monday.

The department’s Office of Inspector General didn’t budge after Reuveni’s lawyers urged it to reconsider, citing the office’s inability to interfere with ongoing litigation related to the matter and referring the complaint to DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

But OPR—which handles attorney misconduct cases and lacks OIG’s jurisdiction to investigate criminal wrongdoing as alleged by Reuveni—has been woefully understaffed in the Trump administration and hasn’t “expressed any interest in conducting an investigation,” Reuveni’s lawyers wrote to lawmakers.

“The collapse of DOJ’s accountability mechanisms, and the widespread evidence of an epidemic of misconduct within the DOJ, call for your immediate attention and rigorous oversight,” the attorneys added.

Reuveni’s lawyers described a major departure from how OIG and OPR in prior administrations would eagerly conduct independent oversight of potential ethical and legal violations committed by the attorney general on down.

“Unfortunately, the OIG’s refusal to investigate Mr. Reuveni’s credible and specific allegations is part of a large and disturbing pattern of OIG abdicating its statutorily mandated oversight role,” wrote Reuveni’s attorneys, a group including former DOJ Inspector General Michael Bromwich and lawyers with the Government Accountability Project.

The lawyers noted that OIG historically would fight to lead investigations or work with OPR on major cases, including the probe of politicized hiring and firing that led to the resignation of George W. Bush-era Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The apparent inaction during President Donald Trump’s second term comes as courts have found DOJ violations of court orders and judges have considered holding department lawyers in civil contempt.

Spokespeople for DOJ’s inspector general didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“Just because this former DOJ employee is desperate for relevancy doesn’t mean there is any legitimate basis to investigate DOJ attorneys being instructed to do their jobs and vigorously litigate on behalf of the United States,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he thoroughly investigated complaints against former DOJ official Bove, who’s now a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, “and interviewed over a dozen individuals in the course of their investigation, including Erez Reuveni and his lawyers.”

“Grassley’s investigation found the allegations did not substantiate misconduct against Judge Bove,” the spokesperson said.

Widespread Inaction

DOJ’s long-serving Inspector General Michael Horowitz was spared while executive branch inspectors general were fired en masse at the start of Trump’s second term. However, the Trump administration called for significantly slashing the DOJ watchdog’s budget and Horowitz departed last summer, leading to fears of lax oversight ahead.

Reuveni’s legal team summarized 19 congressional requests for DOJ’s watchdog to open politically sensitive investigations since Trump retook office. These included FBI Director Kash Patel’s firings of agents, political influence over corporate merger approvals, and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s role in the Qatari plane gifted to Trump.

“Our review suggests that none of these requests are frivolous and yet there is no evidence that the OIG has opened investigations in response to any of these legitimate requests,” the lawyers said.

The department’s watchdog office has undergone several acting leadership shifts since Horowitz left and has suffered from more veteran officials exiting in recent months.

Bromwich, the former IG under President Bill Clinton, made subsequent efforts to convince the watchdog to investigate Reuveni’s disclosures. This included volumes of text and email exchanges between Reuveni, formerly a career supervisor in DOJ’s civil immigration litigation office, and administration officials that reinforced his accusations against Bove. Reuveni accused Bove of saying the government “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order” that would stop the Trump administration from deporting immigrants to a Salvadoran prison under a wartime statute.

Bromwich rejected an argument in a Jan. 22 letter from DOJ’s assistant inspector general expressing a continued belief that the allegations fall outside OIG’s jurisdiction.

“At a time when federal courts have repeatedly found the Department of Justice to have violated court orders and engaged in egregious misconduct, it is even more important that the DOJ OIG step up to the plate and do its job,” Bromwich wrote Jan. 28. “In the past, the OIG established a reputation for tackling difficult and controversial matters, including investigations of high-ranking DOJ officials. Now is no time to betray that legacy.”

When the office released an annual, congressionally mandated report in January outlining the top challenges facing DOJ, it stripped references to political independence that had been a hallmark of the same document in prior years. The report was also drastically shortened compared to previous installments.

It’s possible the inspector general is carrying out investigations outside the public eye, but the watchdog has a history in previous administrations of publicizing the existence of ongoing reviews stemming from major allegations by members of Congress or whistleblowers.

“Unfortunately, the absence of any such announcements, any references to major investigations in progress in the OIG’s semiannual reports, or the publication of any completed investigations requested by Congress,” Reuveni’s lawyers said, “leads to the inescapable conclusion that the OIG is not fulfilling its mandate to ferret out waste, fraud, abuse—and egregious governmental misconduct.”