Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham described the first steps his committee will take toward reforms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application warrants pursued by the FBI.
“I’m going to go to President Trump and say that FISA needs to be reformed, but, if possible, we need to have the ability to monitor efforts by foreign entities to influence our economy and our politics,” Graham told the Washington Examiner outside his Senate office Wednesday. “I think there is a need for FISA, but the FISA that exists today will not not be advised to exist.”
The move comes in the wake of disclosures of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report describing 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FISA applications tied to the Trump-Russia investigation. Lawmakers, including Graham and House Intelligence Committee ranking Republican Devin Nunes of California, have called for further investigation into whether the abuse of the process by the bureau was limited to investigating 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page or if the issue is widespread.
The FISA court itself released a public rebuke of the FBI in response to the findings in Horowitz’s report, demanding the agency make immediate reforms by Jan. 10.
Graham also said he wants to call on FBI Director Christopher Wray and anyone else who signed on to the FISA warrants under scrutiny. The South Carolina senator plans to meet with Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, and others, to craft a bipartisan FISA reform measure and present it to Trump.
While scrutiny of the FISA process and potential reform efforts are lauded by Republican lawmakers, one former Trump 2016 campaign aide, who was investigated by the FBI during the Russia investigation and found himself financially struggling from legal bills as a result, said he wants to see more done than just a bipartisan reform measure after FBI officials testify before one committee.
“This is systemic. I know that the IG and [former FBI Director] James Comey are spending a lot of their time trying to finger fall guys. This is a systemic problem. When you have 17 errors in the FISA court that all go against Donald Trump, this is systemic,” former Republican political consultant Michael Caputo told the Washington Examiner. “Three different groups in the FISA court — it’s systemic. What we need is a new Church Committee, a new Pike Committee, a new Rockefeller Commission. The three different groups, House, Senate, and administration.”
These committees were established in 1975 to investigate agencywide abuses against private citizens by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the IRS. These abuses ranged from intercepting, reading, and photographing mail without a warrant to questionable spying on high-profile individuals and groups.
