More problems with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against former Trump campaign Carter Page will come to light, according to a top Republican ally of President Trump.
North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, who is a member of the president’s impeachment defense team, said on Sunday the Justice Department’s conclusion this month that there was insufficient evidence to justify the last two of four FISA orders targeting Page came as no surprise to him and raised the prospect that the first pair were also flawed.
“We knew that not only that the third and fourth FISA application had problems with it, but we also know that there were real probable cause concerns with the first and second one. So, we haven’t seen the end of this,” Meadows said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.
Page, an American energy consultant whom the FBI suspected of acting as an agent of Russia, was subject to electronic surveillance during the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. The initial order came in October 2016, and the electronic surveillance stretched into the summer of 2017 with a trio of extensions at three-month intervals. He was never charged with any wrongdoing.
A FISA court filing made public last week said the Justice Department found that “in view of the material misstatements and omissions,” the final two orders “were not valid.” It remains unclear whether the department believes the first two orders targeting Page also had serious issues. The FISA court also revealed that the FBI is restricting all the evidence gathered about Page through the FISA surveillance until the completion of a further review of the DOJ inspector general report and the “outcome of related investigations and any litigation.”
Michael Horowitz, the DOJ’s independent watchdog, faulted the agency and the FBI for 17 “significant errors and omissions” during the application process and relying on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s salacious and unverified dossier.
With three FISA provisions expected to sunset in March, GOP lawmakers have threatened to take a stand against David Kris, a former Justice Department lawyer picked to advise the FISA court on the reform process, as some talk about begrudgingly abolishing the FISA court if their concerns about it being used to target political opponents are not addressed.
Meadows, who last year predicted a slew of criminal referrals related to alleged FISA abuse, argued that raising awareness about issues with the FISA process is significant because of how Democrats, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, criticized a 2018 memo by the panel’s then-Republican majority, led by California Rep. Devin Nunes, on alleged FISA abuse against the Trump camp.
“Adam Schiff knew that there were problems with that. He purposely went out and suggested that Devin Nunes was not correct with his analysis, just like he’s purposely going out right now spinning a narrative as it relates to Ukrainian aid being held up for some nefarious purpose,” Meadows said, referring to the articles of impeachment Trump now faces. “It just didn’t happen.”
Former Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who was a member of the intelligence panel, agreed with Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo that there is a connection.
“Four different times, the United States government went and asked permission to surveil a presidential candidate. At least two of them — they lacked the lowest level of evidence needed, the lowest level of evidence needed. This is not the search of some meth lab in a trailer park. It is surveilling a presidential candidate. And the FBI and DOJ struck out at least two out of four times, and maybe all four,” Gowdy said.
He added that Schiff, former top FBI officials James Comey and Andrew McCabe, who signed off on some of the Page FISA warrants, and certain media outlets “were all wrong, and those crazy House Republicans turned out to be right after all.”
