Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

17. Department of Justice · Minor

Issue a public report on the FBI investigations review

Partially done

549 17. Department of Justice

“The department should also consider issuing a public report of the findings from this review as appropriate.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    A second public report of findings on the FBI from the review. The Weaponization Working Group's report on Attorney General Garland's 2021-10-04 school-board memorandum (273 pages with appendices) says it fulfills the Attorney General's 2025-02-02 directive and the report ordered by Executive Order 14147. Most of it is about how the memo was drafted under White House pressure, but its third part reports what the FBI did with it: the Bureau opened twenty-five Guardian assessments of school-board threats and tagged seventeen with an 'EDUOFFICIALS' threat tag, and a whistleblower disclosed that one mother was investigated because she 'is a gun owner' and belonged to a 'right-wing mom's group'. The department will offer parents who were the subject of a Guardian the chance to review it. Same rung as 2026-08-27: one more episode reported, and the findings of the review of major active FBI investigations as a whole are still unpublished.

  2. Partially done

    The department published a report of findings about FBI investigative activity from the review. The Weaponization Working Group's report on the FBI Richmond Field Office's 2023 'Richmond Catholic Memo', issued 'pursuant to Executive Order 14147' with its exhibits released under the Attorney General's limited waiver of privilege, sets out that Richmond opened Guardian assessments on two priests (2023-01-05 and 2023-01-20), that the Boston Field Office surveilled one of them at Logan Airport on 2023-01-31 while CBP searched his phone, and that both assessments were closed within a week of the memo's leak, the second because 'no identified threat to national security was found'. It concludes that the memo was 'a grave failure of the FBI Richmond Field Office' and that 'the FBI personnel involved in the creation of the Richmond Catholic Memo have been terminated from their positions'. Much of its analysis re-publishes the FBI's own 2023 tradecraft and Inspection Division reviews; the sharper characterization — 'improper and unjustified law enforcement and intelligence activity' — is the department's press release, not the report. This is what the Quote asks the department to consider: a public report of findings on the FBI from the review. `partial`, not `done`, because it reports one field office's product rather than the findings of the review of major active FBI investigations and activities as a whole, and the Working Group's quarterly reports to the White House remain unpublished.

  3. Not started

    The record moved nearby, not onto this ask. The Weaponization Working Group published a public report on the Biden Justice Department's FACE Act enforcement, with more than 800 pages of exhibits released under a limited privilege waiver by the Acting Attorney General. That is a public report from the same review body, but its findings are about one statute's prosecutions; no findings from the review of major active FBI investigations and activities — the review this Quote asks the department to consider reporting on — have been published, and the Working Group's quarterly reports to the White House are not public.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The Working Group reports to the White House quarterly under the 2025-02-05 memorandum; those quarterly reports are not public. Two public reports are located: the FACE Act report (2026-04-14), which is nearby, and the Richmond Domain Perspective report (2026-08-27), which is the first on the FBI and moves this ask.

Second FBI report, 2026-10-05 (reviewed 2026-10-12). The Garland-memo release turned up among the federal records we keep and search. We opened the release and the report PDF (justice.gov/opa/media/1464216/dl, 273 pages, created 2026-10-05). Part III reports FBI activity, not only the memo’s drafting: twenty-five Guardian assessments, seventeen tagged “EDUOFFICIALS”. So it gets a partial event of its own, at the same Status. The release links the report at media/1464216; the media/1464201 link on the companion ED–DOJ release is a second copy of the same report. #1528 (the review itself) gets the matching event, as it did for the Richmond report.

Moved 2026-09-30, not started → partial. The Richmond report was published a month before and nothing caught it: DOJ press releases were not then among the federal records we keep and search, so our routine scan of new records could not see them. It was found while rechecking our list of records to request under the Freedom of Information Act. The correction below still holds for the FACE Act event — the new event is what moves the Status.

Corrected 2026-09-01, partial → not started. The 2026-04-14 event was partial on the FACE Act report, which is also the third event of #1528 (the review itself). The two asks are not reached the same distance by that document: for #1528 it is one line of inquiry closed inside the review, while for this Quote it is a report on a different subject from the one whose findings the Quote asks the department to publish — #1528’s own note says “the comprehensive review of major active FBI investigations the Quote asks for is not among the published output”. Progress is measured on this ask, not on a neighboring one, so the event is corrected in place: the date and the Primary Evidence stay, and the note says the record moved nearby. The event was corrected rather than replaced because nothing new was found; what was wrong was the earlier judgment, not the record.

Action
issue
Object
public report on the FBI review
ID
1530