Sen. Chuck Grassley took the Justice Department to task on Monday for failing to do a better job of ensuring its staffers are honest.
The Iowa Republican railed at DoJ for its “repeated failure to prosecute employees” who were caught lying during internal investigations, Just the News .
“An unsettling pattern has emerged from the Department of Justice (DOJ) whereby criminal referrals by the Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General (OIG), against DOJ employees for making materially false statements are rarely prosecuted,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“Meanwhile, those same charges are frequently prosecuted when it is DOJ who brings the same charges against the American public,” the letter noted.
“Even though federal law, codified in 18 U.S.C. §1001, makes no distinction between making false statements to federal agencies, DOJ, Congress, or the Inspector General, it appears that in practice, DOJ rarely enforces this statute when DOJ employees are found to have committed the offense,” Grassley wrote.
The outlet continued:
Grassley said the “most shocking example of this pattern” occurred last month after the DOJ to bring charges against the former FBI agents who botched the investigation of Dr. Larry Nassar, the former U.S. women’s national gymnastics team physician who was sentenced to prison for assaulting gymnasts.
The Iowa Republican listed a dozen other cases in which the United States Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute staffers. For example, the OIG substantiated allegations that an employee made inaccurate statements in an investigation report and the staffer even admitted to lying, but the attorney’s office decided to not prosecute.
In another case, the OIG supported the claim that an employee received about $350,000 worth of excess worker’s compensation disability payments, but the office did not file charges.
“Laws are meant to deter criminal activity, but when DOJ does not enforce those laws but rather shields their employees from consequences, it has the opposite effect,” Grassley’s letter continued.
“It creates a sense of entitlement and signals that DOJ employees are beyond reproach,” Grassley added, noting that “DOJ employees should be held to a higher standard” or else the department risks losing Americans’ trust.
He went on to ask how many DoJ employees had been prosecuted for lying over the past five years.
Grassley has been a frequent critic of Biden’s Justice Department.
A year ago, Grassley blasted Garland in a letter over what he sees as discrepancies between the way right-wing and left-wing rioters are being treated.
“I write to you to again express my concern that the Department of Justice is not treating all forms of domestic extremism equally,” Grassley began his letter, which was dated June 2, 2021.
“This concern will not be new to you. On February 2, 2021, I wrote to ask about the Department’s preparations for the 2020 riots. The scale of the riots that year was enormous and unprecedented. A Princeton study found over 500 unique riots occurred that year,” the letter continued.
“Fourteen thousand people were arrested in 49 cities. Hundreds if not thousands of police officers were injured. This included hundreds of injuries at a months-long violent siege of the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, as well as dozens of injuries in an attack on the White House in Washington, D.C.,” the letter said.
“Over 400 domestic extremism investigations were opened, a 40% increase in the FBI’s domestic terrorism caseload in a single year,” added Grassley.
The Iowa Republican added that he had written to Garland in early May expressing concerns about “an anarchist extremist plot targeting police officers.”
“I share the concerns of former Attorney General Bill Barr and former Acting Secretary for Homeland Security Chad Wolf that the federal government appears to have robust capabilities in targeting militia extremists and white supremacists, but very little capability in fighting anarchist extremism,” Grassley wrote.
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