Today’s entry: Where or who are the FISA judges that were fooled 4 times. Why are these judges not held accountable for their stupidity?
Bottom Line: On back of IG Michael Horowitz's report the spin is in and extensive. The report is 476 pages, it depicts 17 specific acts of misconduct, specifically cited the Steele Dossier as the central evidence provided to the FISA court leading to the surveilling team Trump. Much of the news media and reporting jumped straight to the summary rather than considering the facts in the report. How many reporters read the report before discussing it in empirical terms?
First, the FISA court is as close to a rubber stamp as you’re going to find. That probably plays a role in what happened here. The FISA court was created in 1978 to handle the most sensitive requests by intelligence agencies. From 1978 through 2018 the FISA court’s scorecard looked like this:
- 41,222 requests made of the court
- 40,688 approved
That’s 98.7% of requests approved. In other words, it would have been highly anomalous for the FISA court not to issue the surveillance requests. Something else that jumps out about those numbers is that we average several requests and several granted requests per day. I’m not sure if that’s good, bad or just is, but I think most people would be surprised at how common this process happens to be. Without any additional knowledge about why specifically the FISA court allowed these requests to be granted, it’s safe to say that they generally trust the Intelligence and Justice Department officials who sign off on the requests and make the case. That’s honestly the tragedy here. Shouldn’t all of us as Americans be able to trust the FBI director and top-level Justice Department officials? Without cause not to trust them at the time, I understand why the court erred in its decision. It’s why it's important we have accountability from Durham.
As for the FISA justices themselves, they’re all appointed by the Chief Justice, John Roberts. Opinions can be mixed about him, but he’s clearly not someone who has displayed an inherently leftist judicial philosophy.
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