Serious questions remain about whether the Justice Department departed from strict scrutiny traditionally afforded law enforcement actions involving elected officials in favor of partisan political interests of the Trump White House.
In the spring of 2006, top Justice Department officials were considering an extraordinary next step in a bribery investigation of a sitting House member.
“Any decision to go after a lawmaker is a big deal,” Gonzales said, recently recounting the 15-year-old episode that now appears almost restrained in light of the Trump Justice Department’s decision to secretly seek the phone records of two Democratic congressmen as part of a 2018 leak investigation.
Yet, with some former officials distancing themselves from the department's contentious action, a more disquieting scenario has been raised. While the inspector general's investigation proceeds, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday he had instructed Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco to "strengthen the department’s existing policies and procedures for obtaining records of the Legislative branch."
From the U.S Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Va., the FBI, and Justice's Criminal Division to the attorney general's suite at Main Justice, a cadre of officials weighed the merits of such an extraordinary action, knowing there would be blowback.
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