Leak investigations during the Trump administration extended far deeper into Congress than previously known, leading to scrutiny of the records of dozens of staff members, the Justice Department’s inspector general found in what he described as worrisome overreach.

In a report released on Tuesday, the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, examined how federal prosecutors under President Donald J. Trump tried to determine who was revealing classified information to journalists in 2017. The issue, while seven years old, may gain new urgency under a second Trump administration given that the president-elect has vowed to pursue leakers in his coming term.

While the leak investigations are closed, the statute of limitations has not expired for the potential crimes being investigated, so the next Trump administration could, if it chose, re-open them.

The report did not find that politics were a motivating force in the actions of the investigators. The inquiries touched a roughly equal number of Democratic and Republican aides at the time, including Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I., Kash Patel. And in fact, some of the behavior Mr. Horowitz identified as the most troubling did not require senior approvals within the department at the time.

The broad outlines of the leak investigations, which included subpoenas and other legal maneuvers to secretly seize the phone and email records of reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, have previously been reported. The findings on Tuesday, however, lay out in much greater detail the investigative efforts directed at congressional staff and two members of Congress, underscoring the extent of the Trump administration’s efforts to hunt for the source of leaks about Trump associates and Russia.

In the Times article at issue, the Trump Justice Department was trying to determine the source of leaked classified information about Russian hackers.

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