Tea at Trianon: FISA Court Slams FBI

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

FISA Court Slams FBI

From Zero Hedge:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court slammed the FBI on Tuesday in a rare public statement over the agency's handling of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page's warrant application and subsequent renewals, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes," reads the statement.

The punchline: "The FBI's handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor" required by federal investigators, adding "The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable," wrote the court, which called the recent watchdog report from the DOJ's Inspector General "troubling." (Read more.)

From The Daily Wire:

Rosemary Collyer, Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), released a rare statement on Tuesday slamming the FBI’s misconduct in surveilling the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election which occurred under the leadership of disgraced former FBI Director James Comey. “This order responds to reports that personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI’s case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page,” Collyer wrote. “When FBI personnel mislead NSD in the ways described above, they equally mislead the FISC.”

Collyer explained in detail the process involved in obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application against a person suspected of being the agent of a foreign power, saying that it was necessary for people to understand the process in order to “appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct” that happened. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: And the President is the one being blamed for unconstitutional actions. The hypocrisy of it all is audacious.; December 18, 2019 at 8:01:00 PM EST