This was reported on a week ago but focused only on the agents of the FBI that are banned from any interaction with the FISA court but it was far more important for another reason. As evidence has emerged that the FBI deceived the court no less than 17 times, the FBI has built up a defense that low level agents were responsible and they were not attempts to deceive the court.
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Boasberg, the new chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, who leans far to the left made a shocking pronouncement an blamed the errors on intentional acts committed to deceive the court. He also statd thaqt the deception comes from the top of the FBI and the DOJ and not the low level employees they tried to sacrifice.
The new revelations were discovered by investigative reporter John Solomon. They make for an interesting read and it is the very first time that a report or a decision called these intentional deceptions in order to spy on the Trump campaign.
From Red State
Solomon reports that “in just 21 words, Boasberg provided the first judicial declaration the FBI had misled the court, not just committed process errors.” Boasberg wrote:
There is thus little doubt that the government breached its duty of candor to the Court with respect to those applications.
Simply put, none of this was an accident. It was deliberate. Boasberg adds:
The frequency and seriousness of these errors in a case that, given its sensitive nature, had an unusually high level of review at both DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have called into question the reliability of the information proffered in other FBI applications.
Solomon explains the enormity of Boasberg’s statement:
Boasberg’s ruling was far more than a temporary suspension of FBI personnel’s participation in the FISA court. It is the first and only judicial finding in the Russia case that the FBI vastly misled the nation’s intelligence court and that blame must be shouldered by federal law enforcement’s top leaders, many of whom have spent much of the last three years trying to escape such accountability.
For those who have begged the FISA court for years to more aggressively rebuke the conduct in the Russia case, Boasberg’s ruling was a welcome step in the right direction and a first effort to end the excuse-making. But those critics are holding out for more, including prosecutions or disciplinary action.
In the meantime, those who led the FBI and DOJ through that turbulent time — Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, as well as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and Rosenstein — must come to grips with this new reality. A judge has formally concluded that his court was misled by the work product they oversaw and signed.