U.S. Department of Justice
Office of the Inspector General
October 24, 2019
The Honorable Ron Johnson The Honorable Lindsey Graham
Chairman Chairman
‘The Honorable Gary C. Peters The Honorable Dianne Feinstein
Ranking Member Ranking Member
‘Committee on Homeland Security Committee on the Judiciary
‘and Governmental Affairs United States Senate
United States Senate
‘The Honorable Carolyn Maloney The Honorable Jerrold Nadler
Acting Chair Chairman
The Honorable Jim Jordan The Honorable Doug Collins
Ranking Member Ranking Member
Committee on Oversight and Reform Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. House of Representatives U.S. House of Representatives
Dear Mr. Chairmen and Ranking Members:
1am writing in connection with the Department of Justice (DO) Office of the
Inspector General's (OIG) ongoing Examination of the Department's and the FBI's
Compliance with Legal Requirements and Policies in Applications Filed with the U.S.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Relating to a certain U.S. Person. In my prior
letters to you on this subject, dated June 25, 2019 and September 13, 2019, I stated
that I would update your Committees on our timing for completing and issuing a final
report,
As I noted in my September 13 letter, we began the process of finalizing our
report for release by providing a draft of our factual findings to the Department and
the FBI for classification determination and marking. This process is consistent with
our usual practice when an OIG report involves classified information. Given that our
draft report is lengthy, and concerns sensitive national security and law enforcement
matters, we understood that it would take the Department and the FBI some time to
work through and appropriately mark the entire report. I can report to you that the
process is ongoing and nearing completion, and we are working through these issues
constructively with both the Department and the FBI. The goal from my standpoint is
to make as much of our report public as possible. | anticipate that the final report will
be released publicly with few redactions.
Given the constructive progress that has been made during the classification
review process, I do not now anticipate a need to prepare and issue separate classified
and public versions of the report. As you know from our prior work, if for some reason
that assessment changes, consistent with the inspector General Act, we will inform
our oversight committees of any concerns that we have.After we receive the final classification markings from the Department and the
FBI, we will then proceed with our usual process for preparing a final report, including
ensuring that appropriate reviews occur for accuracy and comment purposes. Once
begun, we do not anticipate the time for that review to be lengthy. We will provide you
with a further update on our progress toward issuance of our final report when we are
able to do so.
Thank you for your interest in and support for the OIG’s work. If you have any
questions, please fee! free to contact me or Adam Miles, Counselor to the Inspector
General, at (202) 514-3435.
Michael E. Horowitz
Inspector General