FBI and DOJ news you may have missed

[Sensei]

OIGs prosecute people all the time. For State in particular, there's a clear delineation in investigative responsibilities between OIG and DSS's Office of Special Investigations. Both offices handle criminal investigations for employee malfeasance at the departmental level.

Every OIG I've worked with treats their criminal investigations as a criminal investigation like anyone else for obvious reasons. Investigations for a non-criminal end state, like revoking a security clearance, can obviously be treated very differently.

I know you understand this, but people outside of DOJ often confuse the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibly with the DOJ IG. I’m fortunate in that I’m an expert in neither aside from the mandatory death by Power Point. Basically, the OPR is the FBI’s office that maintains standards of conduct. They are the ones who come knocking when you do things like: text that hot intern describing what you want to do to her using handcuffs and a bottle of Wesson oil, use your agency credit card to buy beer, get a DUI in your “Bucar” (agency slang for vehicle), or put one through a citizen’s leg after dropping your weapon while backflipping. They generally hand out “time on the beach” (i.e. suspensions) or worse after publicly shaming the misdeeds to all of your colleagues via quarterly email.

The DOJ IG is the investigative agency for the entire DOJ. They generally handle more serious matters that often have scope beyond just one agency.

Both entities gather evidence that can be referred to a US Attorney for criminal prosecution. You can get into deep criminal kaka for lying to either as Andy McCabe is learning.

[UNM1136]

Likely picking at nits, but I've never heard reasonable doubt as expressed as that low of a percentage. That would mean roughly 15% of people convicted are, in fact, innocent. Academically, it's usually presented as 98-99% sure, but locally percentages are frown upon as part of jury instruction. The wordage in jury instructions varies, but locally it's normally something like:

No worries. I work patrol and anything that requires lots of interviewing or evidence usually involves getting detectives involved, so unless it is a slam dunk caught in the act that somehow doesn't get pled out I have very few opportunities to be the case agent for a good felony case, so It has been a few years since I got to hear the judge give the schpeel.

pat

[UNM1136]

OIGs prosecute people all the time. For State in particular, there's a clear delineation in investigative responsibilities between OIG and DSS's Office of Special Investigations. Both offices handle criminal investigations for employee malfeasance at the departmental level.

Every OIG I've worked with treats their criminal investigations as a criminal investigation like anyone else for obvious reasons. Investigations for a non-criminal end state, like revoking a security clearance, can obviously be treated very differently.

I could be very wrong... Locally at the city and state level the IG and State Auditor repectively seem to refer a lot of cases around to other agencies and offices. I am less than familiar with Federal Departments, so I will step back in my lane. I drew paralelles that may not extend the way I thought with the use of the terms "errors in judgement" rather than statutory violations.

pat

[TGS]

I could be very wrong... Locally at the city and state level the IG and State Auditor repectively seem to refer a lot of cases around to other agencies and offices. I am less than familiar with Federal Departments, so I will step back in my lane. I drew paralelles that may not extend the way I thought with the use of the terms "errors in judgement" rather than statutory violations.

pat

I think you're generally on track......federal OIGs do both. The OIG will generally be broken down into a couple division......a big one being Audits, another being Investigations, which are FLETC-graduated special agents with firearms carry, arrest, search and seizure authority. Each OIG is more or less proactive than others in terms of criminal investigations. In addition to investigating employees, many investigate outsiders who offend the Department's purview...…..HHS-OIG is pretty big into healthcare fraud, and in particular some terrorism nexus and have people on JTTFs. SSA-OIG will rape you if you fraudulently claim more than a certain dollar amount in SSA benefits. I've worked with DOL-OIG a bunch on organized crime and human trafficking, the ones I've worked with are go-getters and fairly proactive given the miniscule size of their office. So on and so on. Some are more proactive with enforcement, too.....from my narrow experience thus far, most of the OIGs hand off their warrants to the Marshals, but they do indeed run their own investigations and present their own charges.

Federal OIGs can definitely run into issues where it becomes administrative investigation instead of criminal, and depending on the agency they can find themselves limited to issuing a report and recommendations as opposed to being the administrative/policy Judge Dredd that people sometimes wished they would be in order to fix an issue.

[Sensei]

Multiple news outlets including FNC claim that the IG investigation into FISA abuse will refer low-level FBI staffers for criminal prosecution. However, Horowitz reportedly found no political bias in senior DOJ decision making, including the decision to open the investigation. I find this interesting since the narrative has always been that our federal LE agencies were composed of dedicated professionals, and it was rot at the very top that was the problem. That apparently is not what the IG found as he supposedly describes sloppy processes by field agents assigned to the case. Personally, I’m not ready to accept this flipped narrative as it goes against my personal experience with the agency involved; I need to see this in writing with my own eyes.


It is unclear to me if this DOJ IG was able to comment on other agencies in the intelligence apparatus.

Overall, this report may not help Trump make the case that his candidacy and administration were undermined by what people refer to a “The Deep State.” Perhaps the FBI went on a witch hunt because Trump appeared to be flying on a broom.