A “good friend” of former FBI Director James Comey defended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s controversial pick to oversee reforms in the FISA process.
Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, chided Republican outrage over the selection of former Obama administration lawyer David Kris, who on the blog and elsewhere has spoken out in support of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and criticized the House Intelligence Committee’s 2018 memo on alleged FISA abuses.
“One thing you will not see in the current spate of attacks on [Kris] is people of either party who know anything about FISA participating in the attacks. There’s a reason for that,” Wittes tweeted on Tuesday. “They all know that there is nobody who knows more or who stands more for nonpartisan expertise.”
Wittes was responding to a Fox News interview by former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who acknowledged Kris has a “fairly impressive resume,” but concluded that he is a “bad pick” by the FISA court while noting Kris writes for a “very liberal blog.”
“Okay, folks, get this: Matthew Whitaker, of all people, on Fox News, of all networks, suggests that [Kris] is too partisan to advise the FISC because, among other things, he writes on ‘a very liberal blog’: [Lawfare]. If you don’t laugh, you cry,” Wittes said. “The very essence of Trumpism is projection.”
Kris, a former assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s national security division during the Obama administration, was recently picked by James Boasberg, the new presiding judge over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to serve as the court’s amicus curiae, a position that is supposed to provide impartial advice to the secretive court. He will oversee the implementation of reforms after a scathing Justice Department watchdog report on serious errors found in the FBI’s efforts to wiretap Carter Page, an American foreign policy adviser who helped President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
In testimony about his report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz faulted the FBI’s “entire chain of command” in seeking the warrants, which would include Comey, who signed off on the original Page warrant application and two of the three renewals.
Democrats claimed Horowitz’s report, released last month, debunked “conspiracy theories” about the Trump-Russia investigation, but Republicans argue the selection of Kris shows there is not a serious effort to implement changes to clean up the FISA process. Trump also reacted to the Kris news over the weekend, tweeting, “Zero credibility. THE SWAMP!”
With three FISA provisions expected to sunset in March, House Republicans say they intend to make a stand against Kris, and some, including House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, said this week that Congress should consider abolishing the FISA court if “[the] Democratic Party gets to use these tools to attempt to remove presidents and target political operatives when they want to.”
“Congress should consider getting rid of FISA courts altogether,” wrote William McGurn, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. “Because without judges to hide behind, executive officials who order spying on their fellow citizens will have to own those decisions themselves.”
In a blog post Wednesday that cites some of Kris’s writing, Wittes said McGurn’s sentiment is “very dangerous nonsense.” He argued that “unless one intends to abolish national security surveillance altogether, one is realistically talking about mending the FISA process, not ending it.”
