In an absolutely stunning move, the FISA court has issued a public order against the FBI.
The court has given the FBI a January 10 deadline to fix the problems that resulted in the court being presented with misleading information.
Virtually Unprecedented Move
To my knowledge, the FISA court has only issued a public reprimand such as this on one other occasion.
Judge Collyer of the FISA court stated, “The frequency with which representations made by F.B.I. personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other F.B.I. applications is reliable.”
This will end any doubt as to whether or not James Comey’s FBI conducted itself properly during this investigation.
It also lends a lot more credence to the position being taken by Republicans that the investigation itself was biased and should have been ended during its early stages.
At the very least, there is simply no way the surveillance would have ever been ordered.
FISA Reforms
The impact of this case could have a far-reaching effect.
According to IG Horowitz, the Inspector General’s office is now conducting a widespread audit of FBI FISA requests.
This could work two ways, neither of them good for Democrats or James Comey.
If there are no other cases, it shows that efforts were made specifically, in this case, to hurt Trump, proving bias.
After all, it is a fairly reasonable assumption to make that if a department regularly hands in warrants with no errors then commits 17 errors in a case involving Donald Trump, something is amiss.
On the other hand, if the audit shows regular abuse, it may actually create a legal problem that James Comey will not be able to avoid.
If his FBI was regularly manipulating documents to permit surveillance of American citizens where the FBI would normally not have just cause, there is going to be all hell to pay and Comey will be front and center to buck up.
Source: NY Times
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