Except as expressly provided in this section, all congressional member and staff contacts with Department employees, attorneys, offices, boards, divisions, and components, including in-person contacts and contacts by letter, email, telephone, or any other means, must be reported promptly to OLA and the component’s designated congressional liaison, if applicable, before any response.

OLA will manage congressional correspondence, coordinating with the Department’s Executive Secretariat, leadership offices, and components as appropriate. OLA will review prior to transmittal all Departmental written communications to Congress, including letters, responses to Questions for the Record, briefing papers, talking points, slide presentations, and any other materials intended for submission or presentation on Capitol Hill. Likewise, OLA will manage the clearance process through which legislative proposals and views are considered by Department components and the Office of Management and Budget prior to the Department’s views on those matters being communicated to Congress.

In order to ensure that Congress may carry out its legitimate investigatory and oversight functions, the Department will use its best efforts to respond as appropriate to inquiries from Congress consistent with policies, laws, regulations, and professional ethical obligations that may require confidentiality. Because it is important that the Department provide timely responses to congressional inquiries when possible, components should make it a priority to assist OLA in this regard.

In general, other than letters assigned for direct response by the component, letters to Congress and committees should be prepared by the relevant component and sent by the Assistant Attorney General for OLA. Accordingly, when incoming congressional correspondence is circulated to components likely to have responsive information or equities in the subject matter, it is incumbent upon each component’s leadership to ensure the accuracy and completeness of these responses to Congress. Specifically, (1) rigorous efforts must be undertaken to obtain information from Department personnel with the most direct knowledge of the subject matter; (2) component managers are responsible for the accuracy of the information provided to OLA, and therefore should review and clear any congressional response prepared by subordinates; and (3) accuracy always takes priority over any requested deadline.

Department employees should follow these standards in both open and closed cases, and must never provide information on (1) pending investigations; (2) closed investigations that did not become public; (3) grand jury, tax, or other restricted information; or (4) matters that would reveal the identity of confidential informants, sensitive investigative techniques, deliberative processes, the reasoning behind the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, or the identity of individuals who may have been investigated, but not indicted. All requests for these types of information should be referred to OLA, as well as any congressional request that implicates Privacy Act considerations.

[added December 2019]