Lindsey Graham Reads Letter From DOJ Attorney Responding To Issues With FISA Applications For Carter Page
Michael Cantrell
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham revealed a letter from a Justice Department attorney who signed off on FISA warrant applications for former Trump campaign manager Carter Page that gave the court authority to wiretap him.
The letter was read aloud by the South Carolina senator and entered into the record during a hearing held on Wednesday with disgraced former FBI Director James Comey. The letter from the Office of Intelligence attorney stated that had he or she known the kind of issues that have now been uncovered by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, they wouldn’t have signed off on the applications.
via Washington Examiner:
“The OI attorney advises that had he/she been aware of the significant errors and omissions identified by the OIG and the errors in the Woods process, he/she would not have signed the filed Page FISA applications,” the letter from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd to Graham obtained by the Washington Examiner states. “The OI attorney further advises that he/she is not aware of any additional errors or omissions in the Page FISA applications or in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation more generally that were not identified in the OIG Report.”
Graham then noted that two ex-DOJ officials who had also signed off on the Page surveillance, former Deputy Attorneys General Rod Rosenstein and Sally Yates, both testified to the panel that they would not have signed off on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants if they knew then what they know now. Four FISA applications and renewals against Page were approved by FBI and DOJ leadership and by the FISA court, including three approvals by Comey. Page has denied any wrongdoing and was never charged with a crime.
The hearing Wednesday is the latest in the judiciary panel’s inquiry into Crossfire Hurricane, the code name for the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, which was later wrapped into former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
During the hearing, Comey told Graham that he himself would not have signed off on the warrant applications if there had been a “much fuller” discussion about what was going to be presented to the FISA court.
A report on the whole Crossfire Hurricane investigation back in December — released by Horowitz — stated that his team found “multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed. We found that the problems we identified were primarily caused by the Crossfire Hurricane team failing to share all relevant information with OI and, consequently, the information was not considered by the Department decision makers who ultimately decided to support the applications.” The watchdog report further found that “none of the inaccuracies and omissions that we identified in the renewal applications were brought to the attention of OI before the applications were filed.”
The watchdog report went on to say, “We identified at least 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications, and many additional errors in the Woods Procedures.” It added that “these errors and omissions resulted from case agents providing wrong or incomplete information to OI and failing to flag important issues for discussion.”
This is not a good look for Democratic Party folk who were involved in the Obama administration. It essentially exposes the corruption that lies at the heart of what we now call the “Deep State,” a group of individuals who have been plotting since Trump was running for president, to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton and essentially cancel out the voice and vote of the American people.
Here’s to hoping more of the swamp is drained and people hear the truth.
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