FISA Court Stands Up

For John, BLUF:  The FISA Court was created to ensure control of abuses of intelligence collection capabilities to the detriment of the Bill of Rights.  The Presidential Election of 2016 suggested that the supposed safeguards had failed.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Oh My, Interesting Ramifications – FISA Court Requires DOJ/FBI To Provide Names of Targets Within Corrupt Surveillance Applications…

From The Conservative Tree House, by sundance, 3 April 2020.

Here is the lede plus four:

Things are getting interesting, potential ramifications are growing, as the FISA Court responds to the latest information from the DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG).

After a review of 29 FISA applications, from eight FBI field offices, the OIG informed the FBI and DOJ that none of the surveillance applications were compliant with the Woods procedures.  Meaning zero applications had FBI evidence to support the validity of the claims within the FISA warrants.  That’s a very big problem if those FISA warrants were used to gather evidence used to prosecute the 29 targets of the applications.

In a FISC order released today [pdf here] presiding Judge James Boasberg is ordering the FBI to identify who those targets were; and asking the DOJ to explain what they did with the evidence gathered as a result of the fraudulently obtained FISA warrants.  Big.

If evidence obtained by execution of a fraudulently obtained warrant was used in the prosecution of any of those targets; there’s a possibility those cases will be reopened.

Considering the twenty nine applications from the OIG go back to 2015, there’s a lot of potential for some downstream consequences not only for those 29 applications, but also for all FBI FISA applications with a similar level of neglect.

I am cautiously optimistic that the wrongs will be corrected.  What optimism I have is based on my faith in Attorney General Bill Barr.

Since those in the Department of Justice who messed this up are unlikely to be punished, it is very important that any whose civil rights were violated are set free and compensated.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff