The Department of Justice has formally ended its criminal probe regarding allegations of spying and doc stealing involving the United States Senate and the Central Intelligence Agency.
On Thursday this week, a DOJ spokesperson confirmed to McClatchy that the Justice Dept. received’t pursue any additional its investigation into whether or not Senate Intelligence Committee staffers took categorized paperwork from a safe facility, nor a associated probe regarding allegations that the CIA spied on those self same congressional staff.
“The department carefully reviewed the matters referred to us and did not find sufficient evidence to warrant a criminal investigation,” spokesman Peter Carr mentioned in an announcement despatched to the information company.
Earlier this 12 months in March, the CIA alleged that Senate staffers working on a controversial, yet-to-be-published report in regards to the company’s use of torture techniques after the September 11, 2001 terrorist assaults had improperly eliminated categorized paperwork from a protected web site and introduced them illegally to their Capitol Hill places of work. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee working on that report, in flip fired again and mentioned that the CIA has been secretly monitoring the pc use of lawmakers and employees members concerned.
During an unannounced speech on the ground of Congress that month, Feinstein mentioned she had “grave considerations that the CIA’s search could effectively have violated the separation of powers rules embodied within the US Constitution.”
There is“no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that Senate staff may have committed a crime,”Feinstein mentioned, including that she considered the CIA’s request for an investigation as a“potential effort to intimidate this staff.”
“I am deeply dismayed that some members of the Senate have decided to make spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts,”CIA Director John Brennan responded to the senator. “I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the executive branch or legislative branch.”