Excerpted from Pogo: An internal affairs office at the Justice Department has found that, over the last decade, hundreds of federal prosecutors and other Justice employees violated rules, laws, or ethical standards governing their work.

The violations include instances in which attorneys who have a duty to uphold justice have, according to the internal affairs office, misled courts, withheld evidence that could have helped defendants, abused prosecutorial and investigative power, and violated constitutional rights.

From fiscal year 2002 through fiscal year 2013, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) documented more than 650 infractions, according to a Project On Government Oversight review of data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and from OPR reports.

In the majority of the matters—more than 400—OPR categorized the violations as being at the more severe end of the scale: recklessness or intentional misconduct, as distinct from error or poor judgment.

The information the Justice Department has disclosed is only part of the story. No less significant is what as a matter of policy it keeps from the public.

As a general practice, the Justice Department does not make public the names of attorneys who acted improperly or the defendants whose cases were affected. The result: the Department, its lawyers, and the internal watchdog office itself are insulated from meaningful public scrutiny and accountability.

During the Clinton Administration, the Justice Department responded to such criticism by declaring that it would make more of OPR’s findings public, including the names of offenders, and it issued a policy statement extolling the importance of disclosure.[1] But the Department’s promise of greater openness had major caveats, and its subsequent track record of disclosing the results of investigations does not appear to have lived up to its rhetoric. The policy statement was scrapped during the George W. Bush Administration and has not been revived.

POGO’s review of the record since fiscal year 2002 raises questions that are difficult to answer without greater transparency: Are the Justice Department and its internal affairs office taking misconduct seriously enough? Or are they pulling punches? And has Justice Department management watered down the results of the watchdog’s probes?
Types of Misconduct

An examination of OPR case data for the past 12 fiscal years shows that, among the more severe violations—those that involve recklessness or intentional wrongdoing and are defined by the Department as professional misconduct—OPR substantiated:

48 allegations that federal attorneys misled courts, including 20 instances in which OPR determined that the violations were intentional

29 allegations that federal prosecutors failed to provide exculpatory information to defendants, including 1 instance OPR concluded was intentional

13 allegations that Justice Department personnel violated constitutional or civil rights

4 allegations of abuse of investigative or prosecutorial authority or general prosecutorial misconduct, including 3 instances in which OPR determined that the violations were intentional

3 allegations that prosecutors abused the grand jury or indictment process
1 allegation of “overzealous prosecution”

POGO requested information on OPR investigations through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to augment the limited information available in OPR’s annual reports and data for the years 2004 through 2007 previously obtained through FOIA by governmentattic.org.[2] OPR annual reports contain statistics on allegations it received and investigations it conducted. They also include summaries of closed investigations. The past two annual reports provide a statistical breakdown of its investigative findings by infraction category.

During the 12-year period that POGO examined, OPR investigated about 2,100 allegations and substantiated about 650.
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