(Headline USA) The Justice Department violated its own internal policies by sending a warning letter to tech mogul Elon Musk about his $1 million giveaways in swing states throughout the last few weeks of the election, the Free Beacon reported.
The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section sent the letter to America PAC, Musk’s political organization, after Musk began rewarding randomly selected swing-state voters who signed his petition in support of the First and Second amendments.
However, the letter clearly violated the department’s “longstanding policy against the identification of uncharged parties and the disclosure of prejudicial information,” said Federal Elections Commission Chairman Sean Cooksey.
In his own letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Cooksey pointed out that neither Musk nor America PAC had “been accused of any direct legal violation.”
In fact, there was no indication Musk was even under investigation by the DOJ for his free speech giveaways.
Moreover, the leak of the DOJ’s warning letter to Musk also proved that DOJ officials “failed to comply with department policy on contacts with the media, among other media policies,” Cooksey argued.
The DOJ’s letter to Musk clearly was an intimidation tactic and part of an effort to undermine Musk’s work on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign, Cooksey added.
“The fact that President Trump overcame this interference and prevailed in the election does not remove the Department’s responsibility to enforce the law against bad actors after the fact,” Cooksey wrote. “This misuse of government power against President Trump’s campaign—so similar to the Department’s abuses during Watergate—is the reason why the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Federal Election Commission were created in the first place.”
Trump has promised to reform the DOJ when he returns to office in January, starting with firing DOJ employees and attorneys who try to undermine his attorney general and his agenda.
