With parts of the law up for renewal next month, two top House Republicans urged the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee to move ahead with reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to prevent the failures described in the Justice Department watchdog report from happening again.
Reps. Devin Nunes of California and Doug Collins of Georgia, staunch defenders of President Trump and critics of the actions taken by the Justice Department and the FBI during the Trump-Russia investigation, said they were encouraged that FISA’s counterterrorism authorities would likely be renewed in bipartisan fashion, but they called on Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York to address what they argued are insufficient restraints on the secretive spy court.
“Given that we expect to consider reform legislation shortly after we return from recess, it is critical we do not miss this opportunity to amend the law so no future president or presidential campaign must endure similar misuse of surveillance powers,” Nunes and Collins wrote on Wednesday. “Any legislation devoid of necessary reforms to address the abuses of the intelligence community against a presidential campaign and even our sitting President, including lies and fraud engaged in by top-level FBI officials, misses that mark.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz conducted an investigation into allegations of FISA abuses. His report, released in December, identified at least 17 “significant errors or omissions” in the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s use of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s salacious and unverified dossier when pursuing FISA warrants to wiretap Trump campaign associate Carter Page in 2016 and 2017. At the conclusion of his investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish any criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Nadler has requested FISA documents while the judiciary panel considers potential reforms. During an oversight hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray earlier this month, Nadler said he was troubled by what Horowitz had uncovered.
“The inspector general has found deep and systemic problems with how the FBI has used the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to target United States citizens,” Nadler said. “Simply put, the FBI failed to live up to its responsibilities, and that requires action. Congress must address these systemic failures if we are to leave such a powerful tool in the hands of the FBI.”
Nunes and Collins urged Nadler to follow through on that action.
“Reforms to FISA must ensure that the intelligence community and law enforcement are deterred from ever again wielding their significant powers against a president or presidential campaign based largely on a garbage dossier and false evidence,” the GOP duo wrote.
Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and Collins, the ranking member on the judiciary panel, summed up Horowitz’s findings as “unlawful spying on a U.S. presidential campaign.”
Wray testified this month that the behavior of some in the DOJ and the FBI was “utterly unacceptable” and agreed that there had been at least some illegal surveillance. Wray said he was working to “claw back” any information gleaned from the Page FISAs. The DOJ has conceded that at least two of the four Page FISA orders were invalid.
In a rare public order, the FISA court criticized how the FBI handled the Page applications as “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor” and demanded an evaluation from the bureau. The FISA court also ordered a review of all FISA filings handled by Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who altered a key document about Page in the third renewal process. He is now under criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham, a prosecutor from Connecticut who was tasked by Attorney General William Barr with investigating the Trump-Russia inquiry.
“Moreover, and potentially even worse for the integrity of our country’s intelligence apparatus, these lies may have been propagated as Russian disinformation intended to disrupt our presidential election, as described by Russia expert Dr. Fiona Hill in November 2019,” Nunes and Collins said Wednesday. “People inside the top echelons of our nation’s premier law enforcement agency appear to have allowed their disdain for a presidential candidate to cloud their judgment, eventually submitting to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court surveillance applications predicated on political opposition research that was potentially part of a foreign nation’s malign influence operations.”
Hill, an impeachment witness and former member of the National Security Council, testified that Steele’s dossier was a “rabbit hole” that “very likely” contained Russian disinformation and that Steele “could have been played” by the Russians.
“We ask that you continue working in a bipartisan fashion to address FISA reforms, and do not ignore historic abuses directed against the campaign of a President you don’t support,” Nunes and Collins told Nadler.
