A crash course in FISA and the controversy surrounding it

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established in 1978 through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to oversee the process by which the federal government requests secret surveillance warrants, has become a rallying call for the Trump administration and some Republican lawmakers, who say the process is biased and needs to be reformed.

Calls for reform rang louder when a memo released by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee alleged that intelligence officials in the Justice Department and FBI abused the system in how the federal government obtained a warrant to surveil ex-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.