The House Judiciary Committee requested documents from the Trump administration in response to a watchdog report on errors and missteps found in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process.
Chairman Jerry Nadler wrote to the Justice Department and FBI on Friday, saying that his panel needs the records to consider potential reforms. The New York Democrat also asked for “prompt declassification reviews” of relevant filings, including a copy of the one the department plans to make on March 27 “apprising the FISC of accuracy procedures it plans to adopt for FBI applications to conduct pen register or trap and trace surveillance and to acquire business records.”
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in December that lambasted the DOJ and the FBI for 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to its targeting of onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, stretching from October 2016 to summer 2017, and critiqued the broader counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane.
Then-presiding FISA court Judge Rosemary Collyer issued a scathing order later that month, calling the FBI’s handling of the Page applications “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above” and demanding the bureau explain “what it has done, and plans to do, to ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application.”
In a Jan. 10 response to the court, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he “deeply regrets” the FBI’s failures in the Page FISA process and offered a timetable of reforms and training the bureau is undertaking.
After reviewing all these submissions, the judiciary panel “shares the FISC’s concerns and is troubled by the findings contained in the Inspector General’s report,” Nadler wrote to Attorney General William Barr and Wray.
In addition to documents referenced in the Justice Department’s Jan. 10 filing and Wray’s accompanying declaration, Nadler asked for documents from 2015 to 2019 about the types of alleged criminal offenses that are used to predicate applications for orders from the FISA court concerning U.S. persons. The congressman said access to these records will “facilitate the Committee’s consideration of potential reforms to underlying authorities” and gave a deadline of Jan. 28.
Republican allies of the president, who have pressed Nadler to hold a hearing on alleged FISA abuses to no avail, but Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, sees the chairman’s letter as a step in the right direction.
“We must prevent the intelligence community from improperly spying on another American citizen. The documents the chairman requested represent a great starting point for crafting legislation to prevent future FISA abuses. I appreciate the chairman finally recognizing that FISA abuse has occurred and Congress must act,” Collins told the Washington Examiner.
Still, Republicans are skeptical that serious changes are being made to a secret surveillance process they believe was abused to spy on an undermine Trump. In particular, they have raised concerns about the FISA court’s decision to appoint former Obama administration lawyer David Kris as its amicus curiae to oversee the FBI’s implementation of reforms.
“If the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s goal is to hold the FBI accountable for its serious misconduct, Mr. Kris does not appear to be an objective — or likely effective — amicus curiae for several reasons. At minimum the selection of Mr. Kris creates a perception that he is too personally invested on the side of the FBI to ensure it effectuates meaningful reform,” Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina wrote to James Boasberg, the new presiding judge over the FISA court, on Thursday.
Kris, a former assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s national security division during the Obama administration, has on the Lawfare blog and elsewhere spoken out in support of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and criticized the House Intelligence Committee’s 2018 memo on alleged FISA abuses.
In a court filing Wednesday, Kris wrote that the bureau’s reforms would be insufficient without restoring a “strong organizational culture of accuracy and completeness.”
Nadler only made passing reference to Kris in his letter, saying, “to the extent any further filings or orders are issued before the FISC or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in this matter (whether by the Department, the court, or amicus curiae David Kris) and are not made immediately available to the public, please provide the Committee a copy of those materials.”
Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee,
“We must prevent the intelligence community from improperly spying on another American citizen. The documents the chairman requested represent a great starting point for crafting legislation to prevent future FISA abuses. I appreciate the chairman finally recognizing that FISA abuse has occurred and Congress must act.”
