Go
Saints!

Thursday
March 28th, 2024
L&T Opinions Page

GUEST COLUMN

Larry Phillips

Kismet

Last week, I brought up serious problems the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court Judges ignored  when they gave blanket approval for the FBI to surveil (spy on) former Donald J. Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The “We-didn’t-know-what-was-going-on” reply by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Presiding Judge Rosemary M. Collyer a week after the release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s 480-page report is unacceptable – and a lie.

And it seems her slate of starting pitchers, er judges? and their “unwitting?” rubber-stamping of surveillance of an American Presidential campaign was not once investigated by Horowitz. He, too, looked the other way.

I mentioned it appalled me no one was reporting this dereliction of duty by the FISC Judges – everyone was praising Collyer for scolding the FBI brass and giving them until Jan. 10 to report back to her with “solutions” as to why Horowitz discovered proof of 17 erroneous acts of wrong-doing in obtaining FISC warrants for spying.

Give us a break, Collyer. My column was asking for more; why did these judges simply approve these spying warrants against an American who worked for the

Trump campaign? Why did they do it four times in all? Where was concern their court was being weaponized against Trump and anyone associated with him – especially after he was elected?

Well, thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel and www.redstate.com reporter Elizabeth Vaughn, both women blew open the case against the FISC Judges on Dec. 20 – especially presiding judge Collyer. Seems the women exposed Collyer’s phoney innocence of “What’s going on?”

“Why did Judge Collyer fail to act when Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), then- Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote to her in 2018 to express his concern that the FBI had acted improperly?” Vaughn asked in her posted report.

Seems Strassel had the answer. She posted Dec. 20; “Rep. Devin Nunes (R- CA), then-Chairman of the House Intelli- gence Committee, ‘Sent a letter to Judge Collyer on Feb. 7, 2018, to tell her what his committee had found during their investigation of the FBI’s four applications.’

“He wrote, ‘The Committee found that the FBI and DOJ failed to disclose the specific political actors paying for uncorroborated information that went to the court, misled the FISC regarding dissemination of this information, and failed to correct these errors in the subsequent renewals.”

“Mr. Nunes ‘asked the court whether any transcripts of FISC hearings about this application existed, and if so, to

provide them to the committee.’” Guess what? Collyer blew him off as if

he were a pesky gnat instead of a Constitutional purveyor of oversight of her court and everything that happens in it.

“Judge Collyer responded a week later, with a dismissive letter that addressed only the last request. The judge observed that any such transcripts would be classified, that the court doesn’t maintain a ‘systematic record’ of proceedings and that, given ‘separation of power considera- tions,’ Mr. Nunes would be better off

asking the Justice Department,” Vaughn wrote.

She continued, “Mr. Nunes tried again in a June 13, 2018, follow-up letter, which I have obtained. He told the court that Congress ‘uncovered evidence that DOJ and FBI provided incomplete and potentially incorrect information to the Court,’ and that ‘significant relevant infor- mation was not disclosed to the Court.’”

Folks, this was a full 18 months before Horowitz exposed the same in his report. Unbelievable, but it gets worse.

“Mr. Nunes asked Judge Collyer to ‘initiate a thorough investigation.’ To assist her, the same month he separately sent FISC ‘a classified summary of Congress’s findings and facts’ to that point. The letter was signed by all 13 Republican members of the Intelligence Committee,” Vaughn reported.

Collyer swatted at the gnat again.

“Her letter on June 15, 2018, is four lines long,” Vaughn continued. “She informs Mr. Nunes she’s received his letter. She says she’s also received his classified information. She says she’s instructing staff to provide his info. to ‘the judges who ruled on the referenced matters.’ She thanks him for his ‘interest’ in the court.”

Vaughn, and Strassel pointed out: “The House Intelligence Committee has oversight jurisdiction of FISA. The Committee had just released the ‘Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses memo,’ better known as the ‘Nunes memo’ in which Nunes and his staff enumerated the ways they believed the

FBI had deceived the FISA Court. (All of the allegations in the Nunes memo were confirmed by the Horowitz report.)

“One would have expected her to at least question the FBI and the DOJ over the issues Nunes had brought to her attention. Instead, she did nothing,” Vaughn wrote, adding the most important question: “Was she one of them?”

Strassel heaped on her disgust of her discoveries and wrote about her analysis of the FISC Judges’ deliberate inactions:

“The secrecy of FISA had always shielded the players from scrutiny. But Mr. Nunes’s inspection of the Page applications threatened to highlight this rot in the system. Judge Collyer’s dismissive letters made clear just what the court thought of Congress poking its nose into the secret club.

“Judge Collyer failed to act when she should have. Once the FBI’s abuses were revealed to the world, she was forced to respond. I consider that to be misconduct,” Strassel added.

A rational person can look at this “rot” and easily surmise Collyer and her FISC Judges were all-aboard “Never Trumpers” and used their powers in unethical and illegal means to try and topple a sitting President of the United States. They were abetting the crooks.

That’s treason. Period. We must demand Congress abolish

FISA or, at least, impeach and indict the sitting FISC judges.

Drain the swamp.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR, Reita Isaacs, Liberal

 

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