There seems to be confusion about what the IG has been investigating until now. He has been investigating FBI handling of the Hillary e-mail case.
An IG investigation into FISA court abuses was not undertaken until a few days ago, and that investigation was indeed in response to Sessions and Congress requests.
Here’s the text of that announcement:
https://oig.justice.gov/press/2018/2018-03-28b.pdf
>>An IG investigation into FISA court abuses was not undertaken until a few days ago, and that investigation was indeed in response to Sessions and Congress requests.<<
True, but that doesn’t mean that the prosecutor and his team haven’t already been investigating the entire matter for criminality.
The IG’s investigation would also cover policies that need to be re-examined to prevent future abuse of the process, among other things. That would not be the emphasis in the criminal investigation, however.
So even though the IG is only now taking on the FISA issue, it might well have been being investigated by the prosecutor’s team for months by now. We don’t know that, of course, but the abuse has hardly been a secret so it’s likely that it’s come to the attention of his team well before now.
“There seems to be confusion about what the IG has been investigating until now. He has been investigating FBI handling of the Hillary e-mail case.”
The investigation was expanded months ago.
The House Judiciary Committee sent a letter July 27, 2017, to Sessions and Rosenstein that includes a list of questions that the Committee wants investigated; #10, #11 & #13 are of particular interest:
https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/072717_HJC-Letter-to-AG-DAG.pdf
Stephen Boyd replied for the DOJ on Nov 13, 2017 and indicated that the DOJ had federal prosecutors looking into the concerns listed in the July letter.
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015f-b85c-d93c-a77f-b9dfe5950000