In the midst of all the impeachment drama, the federal FISA court issued an order the likes of which is rarely seen, and never seen in my experience. The only way to describe this order is as a serious and deliberate rebuke of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is to be contrasted with a judicial spontaneous response to investigative misconduct that occurs from time to time in the heat of a courtroom.
Noteworthy is that the FISA court chose to make this order public. I have no experience with the FISA court, but according to many observers, the court rarely makes its proceedings public. Yesterday's order also refers to additional confidential proceedings about FBI misconduct as shown in the IG report. Also noteworthy is that there is a confidential part of Horowitz's IG report that the FISA court has seen and reviewed but we haven't. In yesterday's order, the court noted that some of this, and some of its other proceedings, is expected to be made public later this month.
The court's description of the process of issuing a FISA warrant, the seriousness of that warrant, and the safeguards built into the FISA legislation to protect individual rights, is a clue about the seriousness of the court's rebuke of the FBI. In sum, the court is pissed. The FBI not only withheld important information from it, the FBI deliberately misled the court into issuing the Page warrant--and then renewing it after the Trump inauguration. In particular, the court noted that a warrant could only be targeted to a "foreign power" or to an "agent of a foreign power". The FBI withheld evidence suggesting that Page was neither. The result of the FBI's conduct is that the checks and balances built into our government, and which congress specifically baked into FISA, was thwarted. This is not a small matter. The FBI's abuse of authority permitted the FBI to spy on US persons without cause. If people are serious about rooting out threats to our government and to the rights of the citizens, here is a spotlight on the starting point.
In my view FISA is important and is part of the matrix that keeps us safe. That said, responsible people of all political persuasions question whether government should have the powers FISA codifies. The FBI's abuse of those powers gives the anti-FISA faction more arguments.
And the FBI used to be the gold standard of federal agencies.
Noteworthy is that the FISA court chose to make this order public. I have no experience with the FISA court, but according to many observers, the court rarely makes its proceedings public. Yesterday's order also refers to additional confidential proceedings about FBI misconduct as shown in the IG report. Also noteworthy is that there is a confidential part of Horowitz's IG report that the FISA court has seen and reviewed but we haven't. In yesterday's order, the court noted that some of this, and some of its other proceedings, is expected to be made public later this month.
The court's description of the process of issuing a FISA warrant, the seriousness of that warrant, and the safeguards built into the FISA legislation to protect individual rights, is a clue about the seriousness of the court's rebuke of the FBI. In sum, the court is pissed. The FBI not only withheld important information from it, the FBI deliberately misled the court into issuing the Page warrant--and then renewing it after the Trump inauguration. In particular, the court noted that a warrant could only be targeted to a "foreign power" or to an "agent of a foreign power". The FBI withheld evidence suggesting that Page was neither. The result of the FBI's conduct is that the checks and balances built into our government, and which congress specifically baked into FISA, was thwarted. This is not a small matter. The FBI's abuse of authority permitted the FBI to spy on US persons without cause. If people are serious about rooting out threats to our government and to the rights of the citizens, here is a spotlight on the starting point.
In my view FISA is important and is part of the matrix that keeps us safe. That said, responsible people of all political persuasions question whether government should have the powers FISA codifies. The FBI's abuse of those powers gives the anti-FISA faction more arguments.
And the FBI used to be the gold standard of federal agencies.