Watchdog – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks outside of a closed session before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees of the House of Representatives in Washington, DC on October 28, 2019. Capitol in front of media representatives. Also pictured are (LR) Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA).

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The Justice Department’s internal watchdog office will investigate after a bomb report alleged that the Trump administration clandestinely summoned Apple over the House Democrats’ data, the office said on Friday.

The investigation will review the “use of subpoenas and other judicial authorities to obtain communications records” by members of Congress, their staff and the news media “in connection with the recent investigations into alleged unauthorized disclosure of information to the media by government officials”. This was announced by Inspector General Michael Horowitz in a statement.

The move follows a growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers, including the two whose records have reportedly been subpoenaed, demanding that the Justice Department inspector-general open an investigation into Trump-era behavior.

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The New York Times reported Thursday night that Trump’s Justice Department seized records in 2017 and early 2018 from at least a dozen people associated with the House Intelligence Committee, including the House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-California, and that Committee member Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.

The agency also reportedly obtained data from the accounts of carers and family members, one of whom was a child.

Prosecutors for the DOJ, then headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, were looking for sources of harmful news of contacts between Trump employees and Russia, the report said.

When Trump’s prosecutors investigated the source of the leaks, they reportedly investigated the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, whose members have access to sensitive documents.

The investigation did not link the House committee to the leaks – but Sessions replacement, William Barr, kept the investigation going, the Times reported.

U.S. President Donald Trump (left) speaks with William Barr, U.S. Attorney General, during the 38th annual National Peace Officers Memorial Day service at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, May 15, 2019.

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Apple was silenced by a gag order that expired earlier this year, according to a company spokesman who confirmed the subpoena in a statement to CNBC on Friday evening.

“It would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the information you want without sifting through the accounts of the users,” said Apple spokesman Fred Sainz. “In accordance with the request, Apple limited the information it provided to account subscriber information and did not provide content such as emails or images.”

Microsoft similarly confirmed a 2017 subpoena and gag order regarding a personal email account on Friday.

“As soon as the gag rule expired, we notified the customer who told us that he was a congress employee. We then gave a briefing to the agent’s employees after this announcement, ”a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement to CNBC.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco referred the matter to the Department of Justice’s inspector general, an agency official told CNBC on Friday.

Schiff welcomed the move in a statement as “an important first step”. But the watchdog investigation “will not eliminate the need for other forms of oversight and accountability – including public oversight by Congress – and the ministry must work together in those efforts too,” Schiff said.

Monaco, the second official in the Justice Department, was ratified by the Senate in April. Horowitz has been Inspector General since 2012.

Horowitz said Friday that his investigation “will investigate the ministry’s compliance with applicable DOJ policies and procedures, and whether such use or investigations were based on improper considerations.

“If circumstances warrant, the OIG will consider other issues that may arise during the review,” he said, adding, “The review does not replace the OIG’s judgment on the legal and investigative judgments made in matters raised by OIG are checked, have been taken. “

The Times article came weeks after reports that the Trump administration had secretly received records from journalists from several news outlets.

On Thursday evening, Schiff called for an investigation into the Trump DOJ’s actions in “these and other cases that indicate the arming of law enforcement by a corrupt president”.

Trump had “tried to use the ministry as a club against his political opponents and media representatives,” Schiff said in a statement. “It is becoming increasingly clear that these demands have not fallen on deaf ears.”

Swalwell said in his own statement that Apple informed him last month that his files had been turned over to the Trump administration “as part of a politically motivated investigation into his supposed enemies.”

“Like many of the most despicable dictators in the world, former President Trump showed utter contempt for our democracy and the rule of law,” said Swalwell. “This kind of behavior is unacceptable, but unfortunately on the mark for a president who has repeatedly shown that he would put our constitution aside for his own benefit.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., and Senate Justice Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Added Friday that Congress must obtain testimony from Sessions and Barr.

“The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata from members and staff of the House Intelligence Committee and their families, including a minor, is shocking,” Schumer and Durbin said in a joint statement on Friday.

“This is a gross abuse of power and an attack on the separation of powers. This appalling politicization of the Justice Department by Donald Trump and his flatterers must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress, ”said the Senate leaders.

“Former Barr and Sessions attorneys-general and other officials involved must testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee. If they refuse, they will be summoned and forced to testify under oath, ”said Schumer and Durbin.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Also joined calls for a full investigation, saying he plans to introduce laws to increase transparency and reform “abuse of gag orders”.

“The current Justice Department needs to act with much greater urgency to both detect abuses and ensure full accountability of those responsible,” said Wyden.

Read the full New York Times report.

—Sara Salinas of CNBC contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – A federal guard has determined that the biomedical advanced research and development agency, which attracted national attention last year when the Trump administration fired its director, has been using as a “slush fund” to cover expenses for 10 years unrelated to its funding, becomes a core task of combating health threats such as Ebola, Zika and the coronavirus.

The 223-page report, issued Wednesday by the Office of Special Counsel, found the Department of Health and Human Services spent millions of taxpayers’ money earmarked for BARDA to fund vaccine research and pandemic preparedness into other government activities diverted and failed to inform Congress – a possible violation of federal law.

Unrelated activities included removal of office furniture, administrative expenses, news subscriptions, legal services, and the salaries of other department employees. According to the investigators, the diversion of funds was so widespread that the employees had a name for it: the “Bank of BARDA”.

The report focuses on the actions of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the official in the Department of Health who oversees and is responsible for the budget of BARDA. The assistant secretary is responsible for leading the federal response to pandemic threats such as the novel coronavirus. Its youngest resident was Dr. Robert Kadlec; President Biden has not named a successor.

“I am deeply concerned about the apparent misuse of millions of dollars in funds by ASPR dedicated to public health emergencies as our country is currently facing the Covid-19 pandemic,” wrote Henry J. Kerner, the special adviser, in a letter to Mr. Biden, using the acronym for the assistant secretary for preparedness and response.

“Equally worrying,” added Kerner, “is how widespread and well-known this practice has appeared to be for nearly a decade.”

The report does not specifically state how much money has been misused. But around $ 25 million was taken from BARDA programs and made available to the assistant secretary’s office only in fiscal 2019. For fiscal years 2007 through 2016, the assistant secretary reported no administrative expenses of $ 517.8 million.

It is also suggested that a Senator, Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, who drafted the legislation that created BARDA and is believed to be its supporter in Congress, has been embroiled in internal funding disputes. The whistleblower informed the investigators that at the behest of Mr Burr and his “pet project”, a “restrictive wording” had been added to the 2016 budget – an obvious reference to BARDA.

A spokesman for the senator had no comment.

BARDA was launched in 2006 by the Congress. Its mission is to fund novel research into vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and other “medical countermeasures” to combat natural and biological defense threats. It was relatively dark until Dr. Kadlec in April his director, Dr. Rick Bright, dismissed.

Dr. Bright said at the time that he was removed from his post and reassigned to a closer job at the National Institutes of Health after pushing for a rigorous review of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug that President Donald J. Trump adopted as a coronavirus treatment The government had “put politics and cronyism before science”.

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Days later, he filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal surveillance agency. He has since left the federal government and most recently advised Mr Biden about the coronavirus during the transition.

However, the report released on Wednesday is not an answer to Dr. Bright. Rather, it covers both the Obama and Trump administrations and emerged from an investigation into a complaint made by an unnamed whistleblower in 2018, the allegations of which were primarily Dr. Kadlec’s predecessor Dr. Nicole Lurie concerned. The whistleblower accused Dr. Lurie, “reported false information to Congress” in her monthly reports to lawyers.

Both Dr. Kadlec and Dr. Lurie have denied wrongdoing. In a brief interview on Wednesday, Dr. Lurie, she was not interviewed for the investigation. The results were previously reported by the Washington Post.

“We left the country stronger than we found it, including a pandemic playbook,” said Dr. Lurie about her time as head of the agency. “All spending was routinely made and approved through multiple layers of strict budget processes. No expenditure was made unilaterally. “

In a statement, Mr. Kerner urged Congress and the Department of Health “to take immediate action to ensure that public health emergency funding can no longer be used as a slush fund for unrelated expenses.”

The Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement it would review how the deputy secretary allocated money in fiscal 2015-2019 to see if any law had been broken.

A lawyer for Dr. Bright, Debra S. Katz, described the results as “outrage”. While the special adviser said last spring that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that the removal of Dr. Bright was seeking repayment and was demanding his reinstatement, Ms. Katz said the investigation into his complaint is slow because the Trump administration has not cooperated. This complaint focused on Dr. Kadlec.

“These people used BARDA as their own piggy bank – both to manage contracts with their pals and to carry out any specific projects they wanted to detriment the public health and safety of Americans,” she said.