The Justice Department on Monday offered more details to Congress on the investigation that Attorney General William Barr Bill BarrHillicon Valley: Subpoenas for Facebook, Google and Twitter on the cards | Wray rebuffs mail-in voting conspiracies | Reps. raise mass surveillance concerns Bipartisan representatives demand answers on expired surveillance programs YouTube to battle mail-in voting misinformation with info panel on videos MORE ordered into the intelligence collection on the Trump campaign ahead of the 2016 election.

In a letter to the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said that the inquiry is being primarily conducted by U.S. attorney John DurhamJohn DurhamSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Barr's Russia investigator has put some focus on Clinton Foundation: report Top Democrats call for DOJ watchdog to probe Barr over possible 2020 election influence MORE out of Justice Department offices in Washington, D.C.

Boyd wrote that Durham, the U.S. attorney from Connecticut, is receiving assistance from a “number of U.S. Attorney’s Office personnel and other Department employees.”

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“The Department has made existing office space in Washington available for this work,” Boyd wrote in a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler Jerrold (Jerry) Lewis NadlerDemocrats shoot down talk of expanding Supreme Court Schumer: 'Nothing is off the table' if GOP moves forward with Ginsburg replacement Top Democrats call for DOJ watchdog to probe Barr over possible 2020 election influence MORE (D-N.Y.). “Mr. Durham’s Review will be funded out of the U.S. Attorney’s Salaries and Expenses appropriation.”

Barr said earlier this year that he intended to review the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia's election interference and intelligence collection directed at members and associates of the Trump campaign. It later became known that he tapped Durham to lead the review.

Barr has said he believes the campaign was spied on and that he’s interested in ensuring that the investigative steps were adequately predicated. Barr has faced blowback for his use of the word “spying” from Democrats and other Trump administration critics who argued he was amplifying a conspiracy theory.

In the letter Monday, Boyd described Barr’s review as “broad in scope and multifaceted" and said it is "intended to illuminate open questions regarding the activities of U.S. and foreign intelligence services as well as non-governmental organizations and individuals.”

“As the Attorney General has stated publicly at congressional hearings and elsewhere, there remain open questions relating to the origins of this counter-intelligence investigation and the U.S. and foreign intelligence activities that took place prior to and during that investigation,” Boyd wrote.

“The purpose of the Review is to more fully understand the efficacy and propriety of those steps and to answer, to the satisfaction of the Attorney General, those open questions. Among other things, the Review will seek to determine whether the investigation complied with applicable policies and laws,” he wrote.

The letter comes weeks after Trump ordered U.S. intelligence leaders to cooperate with Barr’s investigation. Trump also gave Barr broad authorities to declassify and potentially release sensitive documents related to the probe.

Boyd described the review as a “collaborative” effort between the department and the intelligence community as well as “certain foreign actors.”

He also wrote that the department had requested certain unnamed intelligence community entities preserve relevant records, make available witnesses who may be “pertinent” to the inquiry and begin “identifying and assembling materials” relevant to the review consistent with Trump’s order and federal law.

Boyd also wrote that, while Barr had been granted the declassification powers, “it is of great importance to the Department to protect classified information by preventing the unwarranted disclosure of sensitive sources, methods, techniques and materials where such disclosure would endanger personal safety of U.S. government employees or friendly foreign partners, harm U.S. national security interests, or compromise the ability of U.S. government agencies to conduct their important work to protect the American people.”