Sen. Charles E. Grassley on Thursday excoriated Attorney General Merrick Garland for prohibiting Justice Department employees from communicating with members of Congress amid a flood of FBI whistleblower complaints to lawmakers.
Mr. Grassley said that the attorney general’s edict, sent to DOJ workers in an Aug. 30 memo, threatened to “chill and undermine the importance of whistleblower protections.”
“Under your leadership, the Department and FBI have failed to be responsive to congressional oversight requests. Accordingly, it is often only because of whistleblowers that Congress and the American people are apprised of the type of wrongdoing that your memo seeks to protect against,” Mr. Grassley wrote in a letter to Mr. Garland.
“As you are aware, the Department and FBI have a reputation for retaliating against whistleblowers that provide information to Congress,” he wrote. “Accordingly, I’d like to remind the Department that, as a basic matter of law, all employees of the U.S. Government have a right to petition Congress or furnish information to Congress.”
The Times reached out to the Justice Department for a response but did not hear back.
The sharp words added to mounting tension between Republican lawmakers and Mr. Garland, whose Justice Department has been accused of anti-conservative bias and launching politically-motivated investigations including the unprecedented FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida.
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