U.S. House panel seeks documents from Trump-era probes of leaks
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[June 18, 2021]
By Jan Wolfe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House of
Representatives committee on Thursday requested documents from the
Justice Department related to the Trump administration's seizure of
phone records from lawmakers, journalists and the then-White House
counsel as part of its investigations into leaks of classified
information.
The House Democrats, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler,
sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting a wide
range of documents before July 1.
The documents included any communications between the Justice Department
and former President Donald Trump or White House staff relating to the
opening of the leaks investigations.
The letter represented the first major public step in an investigation
that Nadler announced on Monday.
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"The Committee is now engaged in an investigation of the Trump
Administration’s surveillance of Members of Congress, the news media,
and others," Nadler said in a statement on Thursday. "We must determine
if the Department sought these sensitive records for improper political
purposes."
The department's internal watchdog, Inspector General Michael Horowitz,
last week said his office was also launching a review into whether
"improper considerations" drove the leaks investigations.
The New York Times reported last week that under Trump the Justice
Department subpoenaed Apple Inc for data on Adam Schiff and Eric
Swalwell, both House Democrats from California.
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![](../images/061821PIX/news_q31.jpg)
U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler speaks during debate ahead of a
House of Representatives vote on impeachment against then-U.S.
President Donald Trump in this frame grab from video shot inside the
House Chamber of the Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 13, 2021.
House TV via REUTERS/File Photo
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Apple also told Donald McGahn, who served as White
House counsel under Trump, that the department had subpoenaed
information about him in 2018 and barred the company from telling
him, the Times reported.
The Justice Department has also acknowledged seizing phone records
for journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN.
Garland met on Monday with officials from those three news
organizations to discuss the department's policies.
The Justice Department said on June 5 it would no longer secretly
obtain reporters' records during leak investigations, a major policy
shift that abandoned a practice decried by press freedom groups.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
and Matthew Lewis)
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