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Posted on 06/02/2018 10:08:08 AM PDT by jazusamo
Judicial Watch Sues to Expose DOJ FISA Warrant Abuses
Judicial Watch Wants Full Accounting of Hillary Clinton Emails on Anthony Weiner’s Laptop
Border Region Exposed by Judicial Watch Years Ago for ISIS Cells Finally Gets Fence
Just how much did the Department of Justice abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) when it decided to go after Donald Trump? And what is the DOJ hiding from Congress (and the American people) about this scandal that is worse than Watergate? We are determined to find out.
Judicial Watch just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records of communications between both the DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence regarding the FISA warrants against foreign policy advisor Carter Page and other members of Trump campaign ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-01088)).
We sued after both the Justice Department and the FBI, a division of the DOJ, failed to respond to separate February 9, 2018, FOIA requests seeking:
Over the last year, the DOJ and FBI have withheld or stonewalled on documents about the FISA court warrants targeting of the Trump campaign, Spygate documents, the Clinton-DNC anti-Trump dossier, the genesis of the Obama’s Trump-Russia investigation, the Clinton email investigation, and anti-Trump FBI text messages.
Our latest federal FOIA lawsuit aims to uncover details of the DOJ/FBI obstruction and contempt for Congress on Spygate. The Deep State doesn’t want Congress, Judicial Watch or the American people to see the full extent of its abuses targeting the Trump campaign and now President Trump.
The lawsuit is the latest of more than two dozen active suits we have filed relating to the DOJ cover-up of the abuses and the stonewalling of Congress related to the year-long Mueller investigation into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election. Our work is impressive and shows how Judicial Watch is really the only game in town on Spygate and the Deep State anti-Trump targeting scandal oversight.
On February 2, 2018, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a memo detailing government surveillance abuse during the 2016 campaign. This document points out that the “minimally corroborated” Clinton-DNC dossier was an essential part of the FBI and DOJ’s application for surveillance warrants to spy on Page.
On February 7, 2018, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes wrote a letter to Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, the presiding judge at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), requesting transcripts of “any relevant FISC hearings associated with the initial FISA application or subsequent renewals related to electronic surveillance of Carter Page.” On February 15, Judge Collyer replied that the FBI and DOJ “possess most, if not all, of the responsive materials the Court might possess, and we have previously made clear to the Department, both formally and informally, that we do not object to any decision by the Executive Branch to release any such FISA materials to Congress.”
On April 6, 2018, The Hill reported that the Justice Department “agreed to allow additional access by the House Intelligence Committee to view four surveillance applications” against Page, “calling it an ‘extraordinary accommodation.’” The public has still not been told what was contained in those applications.
On May 3, 2018, we sued the DOJ for copies of all transcripts of hearings before the FISC regarding applications for or renewals of FISA warrants relating to Page and/or Michael Flynn.
In February 2018, we sued the DOJ for FBI documents regarding the FISA warrant application submitted to – and responses from – the FISC related to alleged collusion between Russia and Trump campaign associates ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00245)).
In January 2018, we sued the DOJ for text messages and other records of FBI official Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)). Strzok reportedly oversaw the FBI’s interviews of former National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn; changed former FBI Director James Comey’s language about Hillary Clinton’s actions regarding her illicit email server from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless;” played a lead role in the FBI’s interview of Clinton; and is suspected of being responsible for using the unverified dossier to obtain a FISA warrant in order to spy on President Trump’s campaign.
In May 2017, we sued the DOJ for records of communications and payments between the FBI and former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-00916)).
And last month, we sued the DOJ for records about top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr’s involvement in the Trump dossier authored by Christopher Steele ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.1:18-cv-00490)) and ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No.1:18-cv-00491)).
We’re doing all of this on your behalf, because we simply can’t trust the Justice Department (or Congress, for that matter) to deliver justice, accountability and transparency in this scandal of all scandals.
Off the Wall Ping!
Contact to be added.
During the heat of the 2016 presidential elections, officials within the Obama administration, including cabinet-level officials who answered to Obama directly, extensively spied on the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump. Both the Department of Justice inspector general and the House intelligence committee are currently probing the actions of the Obama officials and their motivations. So far, at least five different ways used by Obama officials to spy on the Trump campaign have been uncovered. (Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
In trudging through the FISA document that came to light on Tuesday, it was discovered that the National Security Agency had been illegally conducting searches on people in the US. The document has gone on to state that those illegal searches, which were conducted under Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarkah, mounted to a whopping 85% of the total searches involving US person indentifiers.
Section 702 data on US persons identifiers may be conducted if they are first “approved in accordance with [internal] NSA procedures, which must require a statement of facts establishing that the use of any such identifier as a selection term is reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information.” The problem is that querying US persons without a warrant amounts to a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, no matter what “internal NSA procedures” are followed.
The Fourth Amendment is crystal clear: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
On page 81, the FISA report pointed out that “In May and June 2016, NSA reported to oversight personnel in the ODNI and DOJ that, since approximately 2012, use of [redacted] to query communications in [redacted] had resulted in inadvertent violations of the above-described querying rules of Section 702 information.” The NSA claims that “the violations resulted from analysts not recognizing the need to avoid querying datasets for which querying requirements were not satisfied or not understanding how to formulate [redacted] queries to exclude such datasets.” more at freedomoutpost.com ...
DOJ does not want you to see FISA warrant number three. It was based on the illegal unmasking of US citizens. It should never have been issued. The judge was complacent, incompetent, or both.
Any evidence flowing from that warrant will be inadmissible. Unless, of course, the presiding judge is a Clinton or Obama appointee. Then the law won’t matter.
Supreme Court will rule Carlos Danger is granted full privacy and any such emails will remain under his full control.
NOTE WELL: Prior to the formal signing of Section 2.3, greater latitude ALREADY existed within the White House in regards to collection of information – especially in relation to the Trump Campaign. However, once signed, Section 2.3 granted broad latitude to inter-agency sharing of information.
But by the time Obama’s new executive order was signed on January 3, 2017, all that information was already in the possession of Obama White House.
Thus, Susan Rice’s January 20, 2017 email to herself takes on an even greater significance b/c no one was ever supposed to know about the REAL meaning of Obama’s retroactive CYA.....until Rice stupidly laid it all out in an official email.
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When Susan Rice stupidly wrote a CYA memo to herself, she inadvertently confessed to a series of crimes that added the time line and inferences about what the outgoing Obama administration illegally concealed from incoming President Trump and his aides.
CYA memos are rarely a good idea. Most often, they reveal things the author never intended——ala Susan Rice’s now-infamous email to herself.
powerlineblog.com
WHY SUSAN RICE WROTE AN EMAIL TO HERSELF........the extraordinary email Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote to herself at 12:15 on January 20, 2017........within minutes of President Trump’s inauguration must have been her last act, more or less, before she vacated the White House. So obviously the email was important to her. But why would it be important to send an email to herself (the only person copied was one of her aides)?
If you read the email, along with Senator Grassley’s letter to Rice, it is obvious that it is a CYA memo. But the question is, whose A is being C’d?
Most attention, so far, has focused on the first two paragraphs of the email, which describe a meeting that occurred around two weeks earlier. The participants included <><>Barack Obama, <><>Joe Biden, <><>James Comey, <><> Sally Yates–who turns up like a bad penny whenever skulduggery is afoot– <><>and Rice:
Rice made sure to underscore that Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book”. Rice writes Obama stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.
This is pure boilerplate.
It represents, obviously, the Obama company line. But Rice did not write her email to cover Barack Obama’s rear end. If she or anyone else had wanted to document the claim that Obama said to proceed “by the book,” the appropriate course would have been an official memo that copied others who were present and would have gone into the file. (My guess is that such a memo was written, but we haven’t seen it.)
The important part of the email is not the paragraph that purports to exonerate Obama, but the paragraphs that follow: “From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”
The next paragraph of the email remains classified and has been redacted. The email concludes: The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.
CONCLUSION Why did Susan Rice send herself an email purporting to document this part of the meeting? Because she was C’ing her own A. Rice was nervous about the fact that, at the president’s direction, she had failed to “share information fully as it relates to Russia” with President Trump’s incoming national security team.
Her actions violated longstanding American tradition. Outgoing administrations have always cooperated in the transition to a new administration, whether of the same or the opposing party, especially on matters relating to national security.
Susan Rice is far from the brightest bulb on the tree, but she was well aware that by concealing facts ostensibly relating to national security from her counterpart in the new administration–General Michael Flynn–she was, at a minimum, violating longstanding civic norms.
If she actually lied to Flynn, she could have been accused of much worse. So Rice wanted to be able to retrieve her email, if she found herself in a sticky situation, and tell the world that she hid relevant facts about Russia from the new administration on Barack Obama’s orders. What were the secrets that Obama wanted to keep from the new administration? We can easily surmise that the fact that the Steele memo was paid for by the Democratic Party; that the FBI had to some degree collaborated with Steele; that the Clinton campaign had fed some of the fake news in the dossier to Steele; and that Comey’s FBI had used Steele’s fabrications as the basis for FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign were among the facts that Obama and his minions didn’t want Michael Flynn and Donald Trump to know. Susan Rice, we can infer, was told to keep these secrets, and if anyone ever asked why she had failed to disclose them to Michael Flynn and others on Trump’s team, or even lied to those people, she would have the defense that President Obama ordered her to do it.
There may be more to it than this. The redacted paragraph likely contains more information about what it was that Rice wasn’t supposed to tell the Trump team. One of these days, we will learn what was blacked out.
The fact that Michael Flynn was Susan Rice’s counterpart in the incoming administration may also be significant. We know that the FBI agents who interviewed General Flynn–even Peter Strzok!–reported that they didn’t think he had lied about anything. And yet, Obama’s DOJ and Bob Mueller’s “investigation”–basically a continuation of Obama’s corrupt Department of Justice under another, less accountable name–persecuted Flynn to the point where he finally pled guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI in order, as he says, to end the madness and the financial drain.
Why were the Democrats so determined to discredit General Flynn? Perhaps because they wanted to pre-empt any outrage that may otherwise have followed on revelations that the Obama administration’s National Security Advisor hid important facts from her successor during the transition, and may have lied to him about those facts, in violation of all American tradition.
And now we learn that Susan Rice’s son is a conservative and head of student republicans at Stanford. Is it possible she left the email knowing it would be found and send the finder on a more complete search? Naw She only does what she’s been told to do. What do they have on her ?
The twists and turns. The subtleties. What a Gordian knot this is.
What is it with Democrat Obama staff writing memos to themselves? That’s like Harvey Weinstein writing a memo to himself saying he suffers from impotency and erectile dysfunction.
Nothing will happen until We, the people insure that justice prevails. All is needed is ONE US Marshall to deputize 1000 honest men to arrest traitors.
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“Susan Rice is far from the brightest bulb on the tree, ...”
She is apparently smart enough to be on the board of directors of Netflix and the board of Bloomberg BNA. She is also apparently smart enough to voice prosecution for alleged criminal activity while serving in the Obama Administration. If she did break the law, she clearly outsmarted Trey Gowdy, the Republican Congressman and former prosecutor leading the Benghazi investigation in the House.
These people don’t require ‘brains’ what’s required are connections to those who might.
Judicial Watch does what the DOJ and Congress won’t.
HOORAY Tom Fitton
Rice outsmarted Trey Gowdy?
(Snort) Even Mortimer Snerd could outsmart Trey Gowdy.
LOL....good analogy.
Get er done Tom
I love Tom Fitton. He is an American hero.
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