by Jim Patrick at Law Enforcement Today
An internal probe conducted by the FBI shows that agents violated their own rules at least 747 times in 18 months related to investigations involving politicians, candidates, religious groups, the news media and others, a copy of a 2019 FBI audit obtained by The Washington Times revealed.
According to the internal review, it identified a ratio of a little over two “compliance errors” per each so-called “sensitive investigative matter” (SIM) reviewed by FBI auditors.
Errors such as those include matters such as agents failing to gain approval from senior bureau officials to start an investigation, agents failure to document a necessary legal review occurring before they opened an investigation, and agents failure to tell prosecutors what they were doing, among other things, The Times said.
The audit was discovered by Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Eddington, who found it via litigation Cato brought against the FBI for access to government records. Eddington said the audits revealed how far “off-the-chain” FBI field offices have gone.
“When they open investigations without authorization, to me that’s about as radical as it gets,” Eddington said.
FBI auditors looked into a small portion of the bureau’s total portfolio of cases. Their study, which looked into 353 cases involving SIMs found rules had been busted some 747 times between Jan. 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019.
Those cases totaled less than half the total number of such cases, indicating the FBI probably has a bigger problem than the audit shows.
SIMs are typically actions which may impact matters such as constitutional rights because they typically involve individuals involved in areas such as politics, governance, religious expression and the news media.
Out of the cases studies…
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