Maintaining public trust remains the Department’s core, enduring challenge. Indeed, in every Top Management and Performance Challenges Report since 2007, the OIG has identified the need for the Department to be attentive to the public’s confidence and trust in it.
Most fundamentally, the Department maintains the public’s trust by faithfully applying the law to the facts. Doing so is the foundation of our system of justice and is central to the Department’s mission. It leads to enforcement actions being pursued with objectivity and protection of individual rights. Strict adherence to the law and proceedings based on facts enhances the likelihood that victims and witnesses will be willing to come forward in support of the Department’s cases, and that jurors are receptive to the Department’s evidence and arguments. The Department cannot succeed in its mission without the public’s backing.
Criminal wrongdoing and administrative misconduct by Department employees undermine the public’s trust in the Department. The Department can gain the public’s confidence by supporting investigation of its personnel who engage in wrongdoing. Moreover, transparency enhances trust. Whistleblowers may provide information that identifies potential criminal wrongdoing and administrative misconduct by Department employees, which undermines trust in the Department. The Department can expand upon the public’s confidence in it by ensuring that whistleblowers are protected from reprisal and supporting DOJ OIG’s investigations of personnel who engage in criminal or administrative misconduct.
The DOJ OIG could be better positioned for this important function in two ways: testimonial subpoena authority and jurisdiction over all attorney misconduct. The Department’s support for these reforms would further improve the public’s confidence in the Department by ensuring DOJ OIG’s ability to compel testimony from non-DOJ employees, such as former employees, who often decline to speak with DOJ OIG about misconduct they committed or witnessed while employed by the Department.
The Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, not the OIG, has jurisdiction to review and investigate allegations of misconduct involving Department attorneys that relate to their authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice. The DOJ OIG is alone among federal OIGs in its lack of authority to investigate allegations of misconduct by its agency’s attorneys. Extending the OIG’s jurisdiction to include allegations against attorneys relating to their authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice would treat Department attorneys the same as attorneys at other federal agencies, and the same as Department law enforcement agents and other categories of Department employees in their accountability for misconduct.