By Tierney Sneed, CNN
(CNN) — Multiple senior officials in the Justice Department under the first Trump administration improperly leaked non-public details of inquiries into Covid-19 deaths at nursing homes in Democratic-led states, according to a newly-released inspector general report released following a CNN Freedom of Information Act request.
The report expressed suspicions that those revelations were politically motivated because they were made days before the 2020 election. The private data involved investigative moves made through the Justice Department in New York and New Jersey, states whose Democratic leaders were antagonists of President Donald Trump during the coronavirus pandemic.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report highlights months of back-and-forth between political appointees and the officials who lead those investigations over how to move investigations forward in those and other Democratic-controlled states. Much of the war of words centered on whether and how to publicly announce safe departmental investigative measures.
The identities of the three accused of this misconduct have been redacted from the report.
One of the officials whose identity was redacted by the inspector general wrote in an October 17, 2020, email that a plan to leak investigative steps to the New York Post will “be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one.”
That disclosure, along with an official’s promotion on social media of news articles containing non-public details, violated the department’s privacy and media contact policy, Horowitz concluded.
“We also found that the conduct of these senior officials raised serious questions about the partisan political motivation of their moves in the vicinity of the 2020 elections,” the inspector general said. His office referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates violations of the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits government workers in their official positions from participating in political campaigns.
(The U. S. Office of Special Counsel is separate from special counsels, such as Jack Smith, who are appointed to politically sensitive criminal investigations. )
According to the report, efforts to investigate New York, New Jersey and other Democratic-led states on how state coronavirus policies were affecting Covid transmissions in residential services began in the summer of 2020 and were encouraged through branch policymakers. Formation
At one point, the inspector general said, government officials skilled in these types of investigations conducted research that showed the state services with the worst symptoms were in Democratic-led states.
Department employees also raised concerns about assertions DOJ leaders in Washington sought to make in drafts of press releases announcing various department moves.
A draft news release that would have announced an investigation into two New Jersey utilities contained several statements that New Jersey U. S. attorney’s officials objected to because they were misleading, speculative or lacked evidence, the inspector general’s report says.
This draft press release ultimately removed some of those statements, but it was ultimately not released through the department.
Instead, a non-public letter telling state officials that the department was initiating the New Jersey investigation – and a separate letter seeking certain nursing home data from New York officials – was disclosed to the New York Post reporter and, later, other journalists.
The Post’s report was released Oct. 27, more than 30 minutes before the Justice Department emailed New Jersey’s letter to the governor’s office, according to the inspector general.
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire™ and © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc. , a Warner Bros. company. Discovery. All rights reserved.
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