Secret FISA court issues highly unusual public rebuke of FBI for mistakes
WASHINGTON — The secret federal court that approves orders for conducting surveillance on suspected foreign terrorists or spies issued a strong and highly unusual public rebuke to the FBI on Tuesday, ordering the agency to say how it intends to correct the errors revealed last week by a Justice Department report on one aspect of the FBI’s investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said the FBI made serious and repeated mistakes in seeking under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to conduct surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
The FBI’s submission to the court made assertions that were “inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation,” the report said
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Oh yeah i heard all about this on Fox. This was the real biggie of that report. When are they going to announce whether the FBI’s counter intell investigation into the Trump campaign was inappropriate? I’ve been hearing all about how that will bring the entire corrupt edifice down and vindicate trump.Report
I don’t watch Fox. I saw the story on NBC.Report
All the conservo coverage i saw went big on this and either didn’t mention or buried the part about the report finding the investigation to be appropriate. It wasn’t a deep state plot but a valid investigation of a compromised and corrupt campaign. The R peeps talking about how bad FISA courts are will do nothing about them and probobly voted to keep them the way they are.Report
Hey, the only thing I’ve seen is what NBC has reported. (Oooh! And the NYT.)
Maybe you should watch Fox less? They’re an awfully biased news organization.
The New York Times is also covering the story. You might find their coverage to be much more to your liking.Report
So when does the rest of the report come out? Dont’ we want to know about all that other stuff.Report
Mueller failed to find any evidence of compromise or corruption in the campaign. He spent millions and looked for two years. In desperation, some of his investigators tried to make a case for obstruction but that didn’t work either because Trump turned over millions of documents and told everyone to talk freely to the investigators. Those are not the acts of a guilty man. At one point he ranted about firing Mueller, but nobody took him seriously and he never followed up on it, and firing Mueller wouldn’t halt the investigation, it would just result in replacing Mueller with someone whose brain wasn’t so old.
It goes back to the conspiracy theory’s basic problem, which is that Trump couldn’t even coordinate with GOP campaign experts, much less the Russians. Trump had no need for money, and the Soviets have less beltway political connections and spend less on lobbying in DC than the governments of Ireland, South Korea, or many Caribbean islands.
However, Putin did manage to get a huge bang for his lack of bucks, as if Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler are on the KGB payroll.Report
So weak. You’re just coming with straight out lies instead of the real crazy conspiracy stuff. Where is the fun in that. I mean, i get the tactic, if all you got is bull then spray it, but i believe you can dial up the crazy.Report
Did you just skip all the testimony about the Mueller report? He said he found no evidence that any American knowingly colluded with Russians, much less any on Trump’s campaign. The report, and other reports, also noted that the Russian twitter trolls aren’t known to have changed a single vote.
The Senate then looked at obstruction, as did Barr, and there wasn’t any that a competent prosecutor would bring to court because there was no way to establish all the requisites for an obstruction case, such as a corrupt intent, which can be really hard to establish when there’s no underlying crime to cover up. So the whole thing was a giant nothing burger and everybody moved on, except perhaps for those who watch CNN who are still convinced that there were all kinds of crimes buried in the report, somewhere.
But there weren’t, which is why Democrats ran with the far weaker case regarding investigating Biden’s corrupt activities in Ukraine, such as bragging about extorting them with a billion dollars if they didn’t fire the prosecutor looking into the company that was paying his son $83,000 a month to do nothing. If they had a better case on a better subject, they wouldn’t have risked running with one that could burn their leading candidate.Report
NPR talked about it too, fwiw.
(Holy cow, so did The Nation.)Report
I’m sorry but this whole thing reeks of politics. The idea that it was unreasonable or improper to investigate Carter Page for any number of potential legal violations is pretty outlandish. The CIA knows that a standard Russian tactic is to secure connections with political operatives for strategic gain. There is evidence Page was playing ball. Many other Trump campaign officials have pleaded guilty to crimes such as conspiracy against the United States and lying to the FBI. My estimation is we have a FISA judge here who wants a promotion and he knows how to make the President and McConnell know he’s an ally in their charade. Report
FISA judges don’t get promotions. It’s probably a case for the pot dissing the kettle, because the judge’s shouldn’t have fallen for such obviously political BS during an election.
Apparently the US government even informed the Russians about the investigations, so the only people kept in the dark were in the Trump campaign. That’s contrary to FBi guidelines which require them to first inform the US politician that foreign agents are up to no good, as opposed to getting in bed with those foreign agents to try and rig an election.Report
I can’t think of anything stopping the President from promoting a FISA judge to a plumb lifetime federal judgeship. That would be a promotion. Report
All the FISA judges already had a plumb lifetime federal judgeship. That’s the pool they’re selected from by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.Report
Fine, they can be promoted to an Appellate Court. My point is they can be rewarded for this. Report
When you dig into this, Page was working for the CIA (wiki), the FBI knew about this, and presented his contacts with the Russians to the Court without that context.
It is extremely weird that you can have “The FBI’s submission to the court made assertions that were “inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation,” in combo with never-Trump FBI agents and “it wasn’t politically motivated”.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we can’t prove it was politically motivated?Report
You know, it’s weird. I think that the FBI probably has been sloppy in lots and lots of cases involving all kinds of people, including suspecting Islamic terrorists. If you don’t have an opposition to keep you sharp, that’s pretty much what happens: You start phoning stuff in.
But it’s only this one that the court pushes back against, for some reason. If said judge actually had a problem with this they could have just denied the warrant in the first place? But no, this is the FBI’s problem and they are blameless.Report
I assume they “push back” on other cases, it’s just that when that does happen it doesn’t normally make the news.
For example the judge handling the Pulse Shooter’s wife’s case was NOT happy that he’d kept her in prison for a year based on assurances she was involved in scouting out the place when a different branch of the FBI knew darn well that there’d been no scouting by anyone.Report
Yeah, I remember that Glenn Greenwald first came to my attention back in 2007 when he was writing fiery pieces about the rubber stamping of Islamic terrorism cases by FISA courts, and the conservatives like Guliani and Dershowitz sniggered at us how we were Muzzie-loving pinkos who didn’t want to keep America safe.
For the record: I am still opposed to waterboarding Trump campaign aides or slamming their heads against the wall or depriving them of sleep until they suffer a mental breakdown.
But I am willing to compromise. Because I’m more mellow now in my old age.Report
Nailed it.Report
Additionally, ABC News has a quotation from the FBI:
Report
Here’s the Federalist:
“FISA Court: Carter Page ‘Misconduct… Calls Into Question’ Every Warrant FBI Ever Asked For”
Wow…Every warrant?
Somewhere, Mohammed Atta is calling his attorney.Report
Personally, I would have used José Padilla as an example.Report
The oldest of the 911 attackers? Not unless Hell has phones.Report
It’s a good thing that invalid warrants never end up in death sentences and executions, because that would be almost as bad.Report
But if the *RIGHT* people end up with death sentences/executions, isn’t it important that we cut these corners?
To protect us, as a society?Report
Any one specific you have an issue with?Report