WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department's internal watchdog opened an investigation Friday after revelations that former President Donald Trump's administration secretly seized phone data from at least two House Democrats as part of an aggressive leaks inquiry. Democrats called the seizures "harrowing" and an abuse of power.
The announcement by Inspector General Michael Horowitz was made shortly after Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco requested an internal investigation. Horowitz said he would examine whether the data subpoenaed by the Justice Department and turned over by Apple followed department policy and "whether any such uses, or the investigations, were based upon improper considerations."
Horowitz said he also would investigate similar Trump-era seizures of journalists' phone records.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and another Democratic member of the panel, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, said Apple notified them last month that their metadata had been subpoenaed and turned over to the Justice Department in 2018, as their committee was investigating the former president's ties to Russia. Schiff was then the top Democrat on the panel, which was led by Republicans.
While the Justice Department routinely investigates leaked information, including classified intelligence, subpoenaing the private information of members of Congress is rare. Current and former congressional officials familiar with the inquiry said they could not recall an instance in which the records of lawmakers had been seized as part of one.
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The disclosures, first reported by The New York Times, raise questions about what the Justice Department's justification was for spying on another branch of government and whether it was done for political reasons.
In a statement, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said the Trump administration's conduct is "shocking" and "clearly fits within an appalling trend that represents the opposite of how authority should be used."
Bates said one of President Joe Biden's top reasons for seeking the presidency was "his predecessor's unjustifiable abuses of power, including the repugnant ways he tried to force his political interests upon the Department of Justice."
The Trump administration's secretive move to gain access to the data occurred as the former president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations -- in Congress and by then-special counsel Robert Mueller -- into his campaign's ties to Russia. Trump called the inquiries a "witch hunt," regularly criticized Democrats and Mueller on Twitter and dismissed as "fake news" leaks he found harmful to his agenda.
Swalwell and Schiff were two of the most visible Democrats on the committee during the Russia investigation, making frequent appearances on cable news. Trump watched those channels closely.
Schiff said the seizures suggest "the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president" and urged the Justice Department to do "a full damage assessment of the conduct of the department over the last four years."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement that the data seizures "appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy" by the former president.
"The news about the politicization of the Trump Administration Justice Department is harrowing," she said.
Senate Democratic leaders immediately demanded that former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, who both oversaw Trump's leak probes, testify about the secret subpoenas.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., called the secret subpoenas "a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers."
They said that if former Trump Attorneys General William Barr and Jeff Sessions do not voluntarily testify, they will be subpoenaed to appear before Durbin's committee.
"The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata of House Intelligence Committee Members and staff and their families, including a minor, is shocking," Schumer and Durbin said. "This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress."
RECORDS OF CHILD
Prosecutors from Trump's Justice Department had subpoenaed Apple for the data. The records of at least 12 people connected to the intelligence panel were eventually provided by the company, including aides, former aides and family members. One was a minor.
The subpoena, issued in February 2018, requested information on 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses, Apple said. It included a nondisclosure order that prohibited the company from notifying any of the people, the company said in a statement. The subpoena didn't include any context about the investigation and it would have been "virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users' accounts," the company said.
Apple informed the committee last month that the records had been turned over and that the investigation had been closed but did not give extensive detail. A committee official and the two others with knowledge of the data seizures were granted anonymity to discuss them.
The Justice Department obtained the metadata -- often records of calls, texts and locations -- but not other content from the devices, like photos, messages or emails. The order prohibiting Apple from discussing the subpoena, or notifying the people whose records were being seized, was extended three times, one each year, Apple said.
"We regularly challenge warrants, subpoenas and nondisclosure orders and have made it our policy to inform affected customers of governmental requests about them just as soon as possible," the company statement said.
The committee official said the House intelligence panel will ask Apple to look into whether additional lawmakers were targeted. The Justice Department has not been forthcoming on questions such as whether the investigation was properly predicated and whether it focused only on Democrats, the official said.
It is unclear why Trump's Justice Department would have targeted a minor as part of the inquiry. Investigators could have sought the accounts because they were linked or on the theory that parents were using their children's phones or computers to hide contacts with journalists.
Swalwell, confirming that he was told his records were seized, told CNN on Thursday night that he was aware a minor was involved and believed that person was "targeted punitively and not for any reason in law."
The Senate Intelligence Committee was not similarly targeted, according to a fourth person who was aware of the case and granted anonymity to discuss it.
There's no indication that the Justice Department used the records to prosecute anyone. After some information related to the Russia investigation was declassified and made public during the later years of the Trump administration, some of the prosecutors were concerned that even if they could lodge a leak case, conviction would be unlikely, one of the people said.
But Barr directed prosecutors to continue investigating, contending that the Justice Department's National Security Division had allowed the cases to languish, according to three people briefed on the cases. Some cases had nothing to do with leaks about Trump and involved sensitive national security information, one of the people said. But Barr's overall view of leaks led some people in the department to eventually see the inquiries as politically motivated.
Federal agents questioned at least one former committee staff member in 2020, one person familiar with the investigation said, and ultimately, prosecutors weren't able to substantiate a case.
The news follows revelations that the Justice Department had secretly seized phone records belonging to reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN as part of criminal leak investigations. After an outcry from press freedom organizations, the Justice Department announced last week that it would cease the practice of going after journalists' sourcing information.
The gag orders and records seizures were said to show how aggressively the Trump administration pursued the inquiries while Trump appeared to target the news media and perceived enemies whom he routinely accused of disclosing damaging information about him, including Schiff and James Comey, the former FBI director whom prosecutors focused on in the leak inquiry involving Times records.
"Notwithstanding whether there was sufficient predication for the leak investigation itself, including family members and minor children strikes me as extremely aggressive," said David Laufman, a former Justice Department official who worked on leak investigations.
"In combination with former President Trump's unmistakable vendetta against Congressman Schiff, it raises serious questions about whether the manner in which this investigation was conducted was influenced by political considerations rather than purely legal ones."
Information for this article was contributed by Mary Clare Jalonick and Michael Balsamo of The Associated Press; by Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post; and by Katie Benner, Nicholas Fandos, Michael S. Schmidt and Adam Goldman of The New York Times.
