Of course the FBI abused FISA to surveil Carter Page. FISA has been a Fourth Amendment travesty from the start
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced in his much-anticipated report reviewing the FBI's handling of the Trump-Russia investigation that while its initiation had apolitical "authorized purpose," it was riddled with "serious performance failures." Most horrifying is the FBI's abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which they used to surveil former Trump campaign official Carter Page.
The Justice Department watchdog found a whopping 17 instances of "significant errors and omissions" in the FBI's applications to the deeply clandestine Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. While Horowitz didn't find evidence that the errors were "intentional," his office "concluded that the failures described above and in this report represent serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over the FISA applications."
Knowingly or unknowingly, the FBI used bad information to get the blessing of a secret court to spy on a private citizen. That's a travesty. It's also completely expected thanks to the egregious existence of FISA from the start.
Originally signed into law more than 40 years ago, FISA went relatively ignored by the public until the early-aughts, when the NSA's warrantless surveillance entered the mainstream. In theory, FISA exists to authorize surveillance warrants with probable cause that the target is a "foreign government" or agent of one. Renewal of already approved warrants require new information proving such probable cause. Of the 1,372 FISA warrant requests submitted in 2017, the court approved 948 outright. They rejected just 34 requests, or 2.5%.
This isn't a court by any stretch of the Constitution's intentions. It's a rubber stamp for the government to run roughshod over the Fourth Amendment. It was only a matter of when, not if, FISA would be used in a way perceived as overtly political.
The president's supporters are right to be livid, and they ought to demand that President Trump curb FISA's overreach once and for all. But when given the opportunity to veto the reauthorization of FISA 702, one of the most egregious aspects of the act, Trump signed its reauthorization into law.
Page was mere collateral damage of decades of Republicans and Democrats alike happy to allow the executive branch to violate the civil liberties of citizens with kangaroo courts and secret spying. Page may have moronically ingratiated himself with the Kremlin, but the Horowitz report indicated that whatever probable cause that Page was a Russian agent was disinformation. If that's not a sign that reforming FISA ought to be a top priority for the Trump administration, nothing can curb the police state.
Gloss