---
aliases:
- Senate Committee on the Judiciary
category: Intelligence & Government
created: 2026-09-22
location: Washington, D.C.
relations:
- fn: 3
  reverse: true
  role: chief investigator
  type: employed_by
  with: '[[Ronald LeGrand]]'
- fn: 7
  role: sought records and testimony on his donor network; he declined
  start: 2023
  type: investigated
  with: '[[Leonard Leo]]'
start: 1816-12-10
summary: Standing Senate committee since 1816, overseeing the Justice Department and
  FBI and judicial nominations, whose chief investigator relayed a career official's
  INSLAW allegations to the company in 1988.
tags:
- Organization
- Government
- Congress
- INSLAW
updated: 2026-09-22
---

The Senate established its Committee on the Judiciary on December 10, 1816, among its original standing committees. It oversees the [Department of Justice](/organizations/department-of-justice/), including the [FBI](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/), and the Department of Homeland Security, and considers judicial and Justice Department nominations.[^1]

### INSLAW

In mid-1979, when the FBI sought approval to buy a new front-end processor, the committee commissioned technical analyses from the Office of Technology Assessment and from [INSLAW](/organizations/inslaw/).[^2] In May 1988 its chief investigator, [Ronald LeGrand](/people/ronald-legrand/), passed to [Bill Hamilton](/people/bill-hamilton/) of INSLAW what a senior career official of the department's Criminal Division had told him: "What you think happened, did happen," and that the division had been the center of the effort to drive the company out of business. According to Hamilton's 1989 affidavit, the source also believed "that documents relating to [Project Eagle](/programs/project-eagle/) were shredded inside DOJ." The special counsel [Nicholas J. Bua](/people/nicholas-j-bua/) later interviewed the source, who said he had no first-hand knowledge of misconduct concerning INSLAW or [PROMIS](/programs/promis/) and had heard no credible rumors of it; LeGrand told House investigators and Bua that, as far as he knew, none of the information was first-hand.[^3][^4]

### Nominations and Later Inquiries

On June 27, 1985, the committee voted 10 to 8 to reject President [Ronald Reagan](/people/ronald-reagan/)'s nomination of [William Bradford Reynolds](/people/william-bradford-reynolds/) as associate attorney general.[^5] On May 16, 2018, Christopher Wylie testified to it that [Steve Bannon](/people/steve-bannon/) had engaged SCL, "a foreign military contractor," to build "an arsenal of informational weapons."[^6] Under Chairman Dick Durbin it sought the records and testimony of [Leonard Leo](/people/leonard-leo/) on his network of conservative donor groups; on July 25, 2023, Leo's counsel declined to provide them.[^7]

[^1]: Senate Committee on the Judiciary, "About the Committee." https://www.judiciary.senate.gov
[^2]: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. *An Assessment of Alternatives for a National Computerized Criminal History System.* OTA-CIS-161, October 1982, as cited on the INSLAW page.
[^3]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc.,* March 1993, and *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report,* September 27, 1994, quoting Hamilton's affidavit of 1989.
[^4]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.
[^5]: *The Washington Post,* June 28, 1985, as cited on the William Bradford Reynolds page.
[^6]: "Christopher Wylie: Bannon wanted 'weapons' to fight a 'culture war' at Cambridge Analytica," testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, May 16, 2018. *CBS News.* https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/senate-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-live-stream-updates-today-2018-05-16
[^7]: Leo counsel's letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, July 25, 2023. https://levin-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023-7-25-Leo-counsels-ltr-to-Senate-Judiciary-declining-to-produce-requested-information.pdf ; "Inside the 'Private and Confidential' Conservative Group That Promises to 'Crush Liberal Dominance.'" *ProPublica,* March 15, 2023.