WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, U.S Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, along with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Committee on the Budget, sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG), requesting that office provide Congress unredacted records connected to the DOJ OIG’s review of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, DOJ OIG produced 460 pages of heavily redacted documents to Citizens United. These documents included transcripts of DOJ OIG’s interviews of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) attorney Lisa Page, State Department official Kathleen Kavalec, and Nellie Ohr of Fusion GPS. However, the extensive redactions make those records impossible to review.
For years Sens. Johnson and Grassley have examined the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation as well as the DOJ OIG’s December 2019 report on the matter. The senators issued timelines on December 18, 2019 and December 3, 2020 providing important context to many of the DOJ OIG’s report’s key facts based on the senators’ investigation into the FBI’s conduct.
“The records contained in the DOJ OIG’s February 3, 2023, FOIA production to Citizens United directly relate to our ongoing efforts to expose corruption within the FBI,” the senators wrote.
Read more about the letter in the Daily Mail.
The letter can be found here.