President Trump condemned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process during a speech dedicated to his acquittal on two articles of impeachment.
At a White House event on Thursday, Trump knocked the federal Russia investigation undertaken by former special counsel Robert Mueller. Then, he took one of his most direct jabs at the FISA surveillance that targeted a one-time member of his 2016 campaign.
“Little did we know we were running against some very, very bad and evil people with fake dossiers, with all of these horrible, dirty cops that took these dossiers and did bad things,” Trump said, referring to the FBI’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier.
“They knew all about it. The FISA courts should be ashamed of themselves. It’s a very tough thing. And then, we ended up winning,” he added.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation was deeply flawed. The DOJ watchdog criticized the DOJ and the FBI for 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to four secret surveillance court applications and renewals targeting Trump campaign associate Carter Page that relied on salacious and unverified allegations contained within Steele’s dossier.
In the wake of Horowitz’s report, the FISA court ordered a review of all FISA filings handled by Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who altered a key document about Page in the process to obtain the third warrant renewal. 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 origins of the Russia inquiry.
The FISA court has faced criticism from Republicans about its selection of a former Obama official and FBI Trump-Russia defender to serve as its adviser on FISA reforms.
David Kris, a former assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s national security division during the Obama administration, had spoken out in support of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and criticized the House Intelligence Committee’s 2018 memo on alleged FISA abuses.
Steele was hired to conduct his Trump-Russia dirt-digging by the research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC through the Perkins Coie law firm. Trump briefly blasted the Steele dossier during his Thursday remarks as well.
“Hillary Clinton and the DNC paid for, millions of dollars, the fake dossier,” Trump claimed. “And now Christopher Steele admits that its a fake because he got sued by rich people. I should’ve sued him too, but when you’re president, people don’t like you suing.”
Steele and his private company, Orbis Business Intelligence, have defended the dossier following Horowitz’s report.
“The report appears to suggest that none of Orbis’s reporting about Carter Page has been corroborated,” Steele’s lawyers said in December after the release of Horowitz’s critical report. “To the contrary, Carter Page has himself corroborated key aspects of Orbis’s reporting.”
