Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Efforts to Coordinate Information Sharing About Foreign Malign Influence Threats to U.S. Elections

The Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General undertook this evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the Department’s information-sharing system related to foreign malign influence directed at U.S. elections, evaluate the Department’s oversight and management of its response, and identify any gaps or duplication among the Department’s efforts in this area.  We focused on the Department’s information sharing with social media companies to evaluate the aspect of the Department’s information-sharing system that the FITF developed following foreign malign influence directed at the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We found that the FBI has developed an ”intelligence sharing model,” involving other members of the U.S. Intelligence Community and social media companies, but that neither DOJ nor the FBI had specific policy or guidance applicable to information sharing with social media companies.  We also found that the DOJ components tasked with countering foreign malign influence directed at U.S. elections effectively share information with each other.  In this report, we make two recommendations to ensure that DOJ takes a public and strategic approach to sharing information with social media companies in a manner that protects First Amendment rights to combat foreign malign influence directed at U.S. elections, thus strengthening public trust in the Department.