The nation's secretive "Spy court" could become a casualty of the FBI's 2016 investigation into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia.
The Judiciary Committee was hearing from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz about his report on "Crossfire Hurricane," the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign, and the "Significant errors" in the FBI's applications for warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
According to the inspector general, the FBI used false, incomplete and misleading information to persuade the court to find probable cause for a warrant to conduct electronic surveillance of Carter Page, an American citizen associated with the Trump campaign.
The warrant allowed the FBI to collect Page's current and past communications, a fishing expedition that turned up exculpatory evidence, showing no cause to believe that Page was an agent of a foreign power, specifically Russia.
Collyer wrote, "The frequency with which representations made by FBI 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 FBI applications is reliable."
The judge gave the government until Jan, 10 to "Inform the Court in a sworn, written submission" of what it has done and will do "To ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application."
The abuses in this case only came to light because the Justice Department's inspector general reported on the FBI's investigations of the two major-party presidential candidates in the 2016 campaign.
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/19/ig-report-spurs-overdue-scrutiny-of-the-surveillance-state/
The Judiciary Committee was hearing from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz about his report on "Crossfire Hurricane," the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign, and the "Significant errors" in the FBI's applications for warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
According to the inspector general, the FBI used false, incomplete and misleading information to persuade the court to find probable cause for a warrant to conduct electronic surveillance of Carter Page, an American citizen associated with the Trump campaign.
The warrant allowed the FBI to collect Page's current and past communications, a fishing expedition that turned up exculpatory evidence, showing no cause to believe that Page was an agent of a foreign power, specifically Russia.
Collyer wrote, "The frequency with which representations made by FBI 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 FBI applications is reliable."
The judge gave the government until Jan, 10 to "Inform the Court in a sworn, written submission" of what it has done and will do "To ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application."
The abuses in this case only came to light because the Justice Department's inspector general reported on the FBI's investigations of the two major-party presidential candidates in the 2016 campaign.
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/19/ig-report-spurs-overdue-scrutiny-of-the-surveillance-state/
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