Guys, FISA Abuse Not Politically Motivated At All, It’s Just Been Error Prone

The narrative has been formed and is being implemented. Fallout expected to be controlled.

This unfortunately happens a lot, it just happened to inflict Trump this time...

quote:

---

a damning report about the surveillance of a former Trump adviser. And the flaws may be systemic.

---

Don’t you worry, they are on it...

quote:

---

The F.B.I. and the FISA court are working on an overhaul of the national security surveillance

---

See, this happens all the time...

quote:

---

In the 1990s, F.B.I. agents hunting for a Russian mole zeroed in on a C.I.A. official as their main suspect as they tried to determine who had sold secrets that had led to the deaths of American spies. When they sought court permission to wiretap him, they kept quiet about facts that cast doubts on their theory.

---

Uh oh, it happened again gosh darn it all...

quote:

---

Now, that defect has surfaced again. The F.B.I.’s flawed applications to monitor a former Trump adviser in the Russia investigation, Carter Page, has prompted a new cycle of scandal revealed in a damning report from the Justice Department’s inspector general.

---

Again, this happens all the time so it can’t be politically motivated...

quote:

---

The problems may be part of a broader pattern in other applications that never receive the same intense scrutiny

---

We gotta fix these screwups by low level employees y’all...

quote:

---

The system is vulnerable, they said, to lower-level agents suppressing or overlooking evidence that weakens their case when they seek permission to conduct surveillance.

---

Let’s not make this political...

quote:

---

The F.B.I.’s misuse of its powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, has been politicized to a degree it never was in the Hanssen case, where an inspector general’s discovery of the failures attracted little notice.

---

What political motivation?...

quote:

---

President Trump and his supporters have long embraced a theory that Mr. Page was a victim of a high-level political conspiracy. The inspector general report did not confirm that narrative, instead finding different — yet still serious — problems.

---

Again, let’s not make this dirty by injecting the toxic nature of politics...

quote:

---

Some of the president’s closest allies in Congress will influence any potential overhaul efforts, and whether they will act based on that narrative or instead focus on the systemic problems with surveillance is an open question.

---

Nadler & Schiff are on this...

quote:

---

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, will mark up a bill that is expected to become a vehicle for Congress to weigh in on broader surveillance issues. He has been negotiating with Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who leads the Intelligence Committee

---

They are not messing around!...

quote:

---

Lawmakers could also legally require the F.B.I. to be candid with the FISA court and to correct errors.

---

Sadly, Trump and republicans are focusing on politics rather than helping democrats fix the problems...

quote:

---

By contrast, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the close Trump ally who leads the Senate Judiciary Committee, is focused on further scrutinizing the Russia investigation.

---

Republicans are wrong to exploit these non political flaws for political gain...

quote:

---

But similar flaws with surveillance have surfaced before, underscoring that the problems may be systemic rather than unique to the Page applications, current and former officials said.

---

The CIA makes it so hard for the FBI to do its job...

quote:

---

the C.I.A. tightly limits access to information about its sources. That means when evidence from those sources goes into a wiretap application, fewer law enforcement officials know details that might help evaluate their credibility.

---

Innocent little mistakes can happen...

quote:

---

the C.I.A. told the F.B.I. that Mr. Page had talked with the agency about his contacts with Russian officials over the years. Those disclosures could have made his pattern of communication look less suspicious. But the F.B.I. agent who received a C.I.A. memo about the issue did not accurately pass along that information to his colleagues, so no one told the court.

---

Those darn mistakes by low level employees...

quote:

---

investigators have repeatedly misled judges over the years, documents and interviews show. When such episodes have come to light, the Justice Department has blamed errors by or miscommunication with lower-level officials.

---

They mean business!...

quote:

---

After a follow-up review uncovered even more mistakes, the FISA court’s presiding judge, Royce C. Lamberth, barred an F.B.I. agent who had signed some of the affidavits, Michael Resnick, from appearing in front of the court again.

---

FBI agents try to always get it right...

quote:

---

“The thing that Lamberth did to Resnick put the fear of god in all these people,” Mr. Baker said. “They didn’t want this to happen to them.”

---

To make sure mistakes happen less, the DOJ is on the case!...

quote:

---

The Hanssen report called for Justice Department lawyers to more closely oversee F.B.I. agents preparing wiretap applications. Mr. Baker used that recommendation to push through a then-secret further tightening of the rules for preparing FISA applications in 2006, including requiring closer scrutiny of the credibility of confidential sources.

---

Those darn errors happened again, gosh darn it all!...

quote:

---

The Page report criticized an F.B.I. agent for ignoring that very procedure as part of half a dozen personal failings that included not passing on the information from the C.I.A., singling the agent out as “primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions.”

---

Here’s a name to fall on a sword for y’all...

quote:

---

It identified this person only as Case Agent 1. But he is Stephen M. Somma, a counterintelligence investigator in the F.B.I.’s New York field office, people familiar with the Russia investigation said. The F.B.I. declined to comment.

---

But he’s just error prone, not politically motivated y’all...

quote:

---

The report did not find evidence that Mr. Somma or his immediate supervisors, whom it also faulted, were politically biased — as opposed to apolitical explanations like incompetence or confirmation bias. (Voter registration records show that a 49-year-old New York man with Mr. Somma’s name and middle initial is a Republican.)

---

Okay, there is one low level bad actor but he’s gone now y’all...

quote:

---

referred one official for criminal investigation over a narrower but more egregious act: altering a C.I.A. email he showed to a colleague, during the third renewal of the Page wiretap, in a way that kept the previous failure to disclose the agency’s relationship with Mr. Page from coming to light. That official, Kevin Clinesmith, a lower-level F.B.I. lawyer who had written text messages expressing opposition to Mr. Trump’s policies and writing “viva le resistance,” has resigned.

---

Again, don’t worry, they got this...

quote:

---

The F.B.I. has already begun making changes in response to the inspector general’s findings and subsequent demands from the head of the FISA court, Judge James E. Boasberg, like expanding forms and checklists. Denis Brady, a retired F.B.I. senior agent who worked with FISA applications, went further, suggesting case agents themselves should have to sign the documents.

---

Your New York Times