Power Grab - Jason Chaffetz Page 0,71
place expending enormous resources on an investigation that was at that time incomplete, Nadler complained that Congress wasn’t duplicating that ongoing effort.
Nadler went on to make excuses for the report’s findings, arguing there was nothing illegal about Comey “sitting down to draft an early statement about the Clinton investigation” and excusing Strzok’s bias-filled text messages to his mistress and colleague Lisa Page by saying, “Peter Strzok did not say anything about Donald Trump that the majority of Americans weren’t also thinking at the same time.”
The inspector general was not so glib about the report’s findings, writing:
The damage caused by these employees’ actions extends far beyond the scope of the Midyear [Clinton] investigation and goes to the heart of the FBI’s reputation for neutral factfinding and political independence.
By failing to grasp the significance of the damage to the FBI’s reputation, the party of big government has actually undermined big government. Each time a new OIG report is released, Congress should be working hand in hand with federal agencies to make government work better. Instead, they excuse poor behavior and then wonder why Americans don’t trust government to single-handedly end the earth’s heating and cooling cycles. They are happy to make allegations when the opposing party is in power, but when they hold power, they have shown no interest in enacting reforms that would apply equally to both parties.
This is a missed opportunity for Democrats to address the proliferating problem of government functioning off the record. That’s important. But an even bigger opportunity lies ahead.
Stopping Invasive Government Surveillance
With the release of a new OIG report identifying serious abuses of the nation’s FISA Court, the House will have yet another opportunity to prove government can be held accountable. Don’t hold your breath, though.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was established in 1977 in response to concerns about President Nixon’s abuse of the nation’s surveillance apparatus for domestic spying. The law set up a FISA Court to determine whether probable cause exists to suggest the target of surveillance is a “foreign power” or an “agent of a foreign power.” The purpose of the process is an important one. It helps us root out terror and identify foreign spies.
The FISA Court is designed to provide a check of the executive branch to prevent unauthorized surveillance of American citizens.
FISA abuses during the Obama administration were revealed in a landmark memo released by then–House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes in February 2018. The memo concluded that the FBI relied on undocumented allegations in the Steele Dossier to apply for and renew FISA applications for Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Undisclosed to the FISA Court was the fact that the Steele Dossier was a collection of baseless allegations against Donald Trump brought by partisan opposition researchers and paid for by the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
I was on the House Judiciary Committee’s Crime Subcommittee when the FISA process came up for reauthorization in 2017. As we were talking about the reauthorization, many of us did not want to agree to a long-term extension. We were worried about the potential for abuse of power, particularly in light of the court’s record of almost unfailingly authorizing FISA surveillance requests. In the thirty-six years ending in 2015, the court had rejected only 12 of 38,169 applications. That’s an approval rate of over 97 percent. Just how much scrutiny were these applications receiving?
I had left Congress by the time FISA was reauthorized. But as the reauthorization approached, I asked then-chairman Goodlatte if we could talk to a former or current FISA Court judge to help us get a better understanding of the process. I wondered if I could attend a FISA Court proceeding. The answer, in no uncertain terms, was no. The process is very secretive. Apparently, they don’t meet very often. They come and sit in a secure facility, plow through the paperwork, and then almost 100 percent of the time, they acquiesce to whatever the government requested.
I was concerned that there is no one to argue the other side, which puts the onus on the Justice Department to give a clear and complete picture of why the request is necessary. The FISA Court operates in such secrecy that even members of Congress charged with oversight and reauthorization know little about it.
I’d like to think I would have been brave enough to vote against the reauthorization, but there is a lot of pressure. Despite the risk of abuse, surveillance of foreign spies is a critical and necessary tool