The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) must end. We should dismantle FISA because of the danger we know it poses. It is prone to rampant abuse. Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee Former FBI Director Comey made a significant statement. He was addressing how the FISA warrant application should have been done differently.
Chairman Graham asked, “Knowing then what you know now about all the things that we have come to find, would you have still signed the warrant application against Carter Page in October, January, and April?”
Comey was clear that he wouldn’t have signed off saying, “No. I would want a much more complete understanding… The answer is no. Not without a much fuller discussion of how they were thinking about their disclosure obligations to the court.”
The problems with the FISA application against Carter Page contained 17 errors and omissions. There is identification of them in the Inspector General’s report. This was a key topic in the hearing. FBI Attorney Clinesmith’s guilty plea, for deleting from an email the fact that Page worked with the CIA, came up several times.
Graham asked Comey, “Do you now agree that the CIA confirmed that Mr. Page was in fact helping them?”
Comey’s response, “I know from the Horowitz report because the CIA confirmed he was what they call a contact… I did not know the nature of his relationship with the CIA. I’m telling you what I read in the Horowitz report.” This answer is entirely unresponsive.
Weaponizing FISA against political adversaries
Graham: “Why is Mr. Clinesmith facing criminal indictment?”
Comey: “I only know what is in the public record. … I know nothing about Mr. Clinesmith.”
Graham pressed Comey on Clinesmith’s conduct, prompting Comey to say, “Any false statement in the course of an investigation is deeply disturbing.”
Later, Sen. Mike Lee seemed stunned by how little Comey knew about the probe’s problems. Lee said, “With all due respect, you don’t seem to know anything about an investigation that you ran…” Lee also notes that he met with Comey after his nomination by former President Obama to be FBI director. He notes the two had discussion about the responsible administration of FISA.
Comey deflected saying there were problems with the FISA application to surveil Page, and with other applications. Comey said, “I agree with you, there are serious reasons to worry about the FISA process. The inspector general found errors in every FISA application. That’s a really important thing to dig into…”
Lee said the FISA process itself must face deeply reform. Citing specifically an ex parte process, or when only one side is presented to a court. Lee said, “You don’t install a wasp nest in your child’s bedroom and then express surprise when your child gets bitten by wasps…”
You don’t adopt an ex parte process and then express surprise and outrage when it goes completely unsupervised and off the rails. This is an issue that is neither Republican nor Democrat, neither liberal nor conservative. It is a constitutional issue. This is a moral issue. It is time to end FISA. It has seen use as a partisan political attack tool by a political party against its opposition.