FISA court publicly criticizes FBI's handling of the Carter Page scandal

Former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Reuters. 

In an very unusual move the FISA court has publicly criticized the FBI for their handling of the Carter Page order that authorized spying on President Trump's presidential campaign. Reuters. The scathing order comes after the Inspector General's report on the FBI's handling of the investigation into supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report found that the FBI had made several errors and omissions and even went so far as to lie about the fact that Carter Page had worked for the CIA and had helped them with intelligence against the Russians. The judge said that the FBI's behavior was so bad that it called into question other applications the FBI had made to the secret court. The judge gave the FBI until January 10th to outline what they would be doing to ensure that their applications are accurate. 

The judge's order can be found here.  (PDF)

My Comment:

Reuters (and every other news outlet I have seen covering this ) is burying the lead. The letter ends with this: "IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, pursuant to FISC Rule of Procedure 62(a), that the government shall, no later than December 20, 2019, complete a declassification review of the above-referenced order of December 5, 2019, in anticipation of the FISC's publishing that order. In view of the information released to the public in the OIG Report, the Court expects that such review will entail minimal if any redactions."

This is referencing a court order to provide information on who was responsible for withholding the fact that Carter Page was a CIA asset. That information will be coming out no later than December 20th and seems like it will be a major deal when it does come out. 

As for the letter itself, it seems pretty clear that the FISA court is furious with the FBI. They have been given rock solid evidence that the FBI lied to the court. The FISA Court relies on government agencies to have at least a little bit of honesty and integrity and the FBI failed to do so. 

Of course the FISA court has come under criticism for being a rubber stamp anyways. I think this court order is more about the emperor having no clothes and it being exposed. My guess is that the FBI and other intel agencies lie like this all the time and the only difference is this time they got caught. 

That being said, I still say there is obvious bias here. The FBI didn't make all these mistakes and choices by accident. They did it because they wanted to spy on President Trump because they didn't want him to be president. And once they did that they made up the whole Russian interference narrative to justify their spying. 

Either way, I think it's pretty clear that on the eve of impeachment that the entire President Trump narrative is false. The FBI was lying back then about who Carter Page was in order to spy on the Trump campaign and I am pretty sure that people are still lying about President Trump...