For years, we have been told the FISA’s strict guidelines and process ensured all surveillance rules were followed to the tee.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told all of America repeatedly that this was the case and slammed Rep. Nunes (D-CA) for insinuating anything different.
Earlier today, it was announced that the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report found a violation in EVERY wiretap application it audited as a result of the review due to the Russian collusion FISA abuse.
Regular Abuse
For all intents and purposes, the FBI was left to police itself on these warrants.
As we saw from the report from the Inspector General after the Russian collusion case, the FISA judges regularly assumed that the information on the warrants presented by the FBI was always true.
Needless to say, the new investigation had GOP members coming out of the woodwork to throw shade on an agency of which leadership has come under considerable scrutiny by President Trump.
While Comey and other former FBI leadership believes this was just a one-off problem, the new report shows systematic abuse, bringing Republican lawmakers to state the FBI thought it had “carte blanche to routinely erode the liberties of Americans without proper justification.”
In four reviewed cases, there were no “Woods files” included, which is a sub-file within the case folder that documents every factual assertation contained in the application and supporting documentation.
In the 25 remaining cases, there was an average of “20 assertations not properly supported with Woods materials.”
In one case, there were 65 unsupported claims in the application.
The review was far-reaching, running over five years of cases from eight different field offices.
The DOJ IG memo released today stated, “As a result of our audit work to date and as described below, we do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods procedures in compliance with FBI policy.”
Senator Grassley (R-IA), the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, stated, “If the FBI is going to seek secret authority to infringe the civil liberties of an American citizen, they at least need to show their work.
“FBI rules demand FISA applications be ‘scrupulously accurate’ and backed up by supporting documents to prove their accuracy.
“But we know that wasn’t the case when the FBI sought and received the authority to spy on Carter Page.
“Based on the inspector general’s audit, the flawed Page case appears to be the tip of the iceberg.
“Not a single application from the past five years reviewed by the inspector general was up to snuff. That’s alarming and unacceptable.
“The inspector general’s decision to bring these failures to the director’s attention before its audit is even completed underscores the seriousness of these findings.”
Also under fire in all of this is CNN analyst Asha Rangappa (a former FBI agent), who did an extensive article on the FISA process in 2017, ultimately concluding the process was unflawed.
She was not alone, either, as the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple noted how Politico’s Natasha Bertrand launcher her career on the thoroughness of the process.
In an interview with Wemple, Bertrand called the act of securing a FISA warrant an “extremely difficult” process.
Bertrand, as you may recall, reported on the Steele dossier, calling the report credible, something we all now know to be untrue.
For years, the media has been bringing in so-called experts to defend the FISA process, but they were all either duped or outright lying or, more realistically, they simply had no idea what they were talking about.
We spent years watching every law professor and media commentator defend the FISA Court.
Not one of them have gone back to say, "Holy shit this this is awful. I was duped."
Those who decry the death of trust in expertise, look in a mirror.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) March 31, 2020
This report not only shows fatal flaws in the system, but it demands that James Comey, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Dana Boente, Rod Rosenstein, and Christopher Wray be investigated for their roles in the abuse of the FISA process that dates back to the Obama administration as well as the early days of the Trump administration.
In one way or another, all of these individuals played a role in allowing the FBI to mislead the FISA court.
If they are not made to answer for this, we simply can no longer trust our own Department of Justice.
This will be a huge test for Barr, as he has been very reluctant to prosecute his own to this point, but he really has no choice.
He either brings them to justice or he is to be considered part of the corrupt swamp we all know exists in our government.
Source: Fox News
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