Justice Department audit finds widespread flaws in FBI surveillance applications

[Peter1469]

Justice Department audit finds widespread flaws in FBI surveillance applications

A DoJ audit of FBI FISA warrant applications uncovers widespread abuse well beyond the Page warrants that were subject to the initial IG report.

Now that the senior FISA judge has woken up regarding this issue, I expect more action from the court. As a reminder, the Chief Judge barred all FBI and DoJ attorneys involved in the Page case from FISA courts until the investigations were over. This greatly expands that investigation.

We may yet see disbarments and prosecutions.

A Justice Department audit of the FBI’s use of secret surveillance warrants has found widespread problems with the law enforcement agency’s process for ensuring that facts are backing up the claims made to judges when seeking a warrant.The finding of broader failings in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act program came in a review launched by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz after an earlier inquiry found numerous errors in applications to monitor former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. In a bid to assess whether the faults in the Page’s surveillance process were an aberration or a chronic problem, Horowitz’s audit team zeroed in on 29 applications for surveillance of U.S. citizens or green-card holders over a five-year period.


Horowitz found an average of 20 errors in each of the applications.









The systemic failures in the FBI’s FISA process are sure to animate allies of President Donald Trump who have claimed that the surveillance tool was weaponized against the president’s campaign in 2016. But the findings also bolster arguments by critics of that claim who have suggested that errors in the Page application were likelier attributable to systemic sloppiness than sinister intentions.


For each of the 29 applications, Horowitz's team reviewed whether the “Woods procedures” for justifying an application were properly followed.


“We do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy, or that the process is working as it was intended to help achieve the ‘scrupulously accurate’ standard for FISA applications,” Horowitz wrote in a “management advisory” addressed to FBI Director Chris Wray.







One troubling finding in Horowitz’s ongoing audit: the files providing detailed support for four of the 29 applications reviewed were missing.

[John Galt]

But the findings also bolster arguments by critics of that claim who have suggested that errors in the Page application were likelier attributable to systemic sloppiness than sinister intentions.

Even so...Horowitz isn't credible.

[Peter1469]

[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Georgia][I] Even so...Horowitz isn't credible.

That is two things:

1. An ad hom
2. False

[MMC]

Not just Carter Page: DOJ watchdog finds flaws in dozens of FISA applications


Horowitz explained Tuesday that the wider audit of the FBI’s compliance with Woods procedures covered a period from October 2014 to September 2019. The review included a random sampling of 29 applications from eight FBI field offices out of 700 total filings, including representative samples of counterintelligence and counterterrorism applications. Horowitz stressed that his inquiry focused solely on the Woods file itself and not on whether the factual evidence existed elsewhere in the FISA application or if facts had been omitted from the FISA application.


The inspector general said that “the Woods File deficiencies that we identified spanned all eight field offices.”


The DOJ watchdog found that for 4 of the 29 applications, “the FBI either has been unable to locate the Woods File that was prepared at the time of the application" or that "FBI personnel suggested a Woods File was not completed.”


For the remaining 25 applications, Horowitz's investigators identified facts stated in the FISA application that were either not supported, not corroborated, or inconsistent with the documentation in the Woods files.


Horowitz said his office's “lack of confidence” in the bureau stemmed in part from how agents and supervisors they interviewed “generally have confirmed the issues” his office unearthed and that FBI and National Security Division officials indicated that “there were no efforts by the FBI to use existing FBI and NSD oversight mechanisms to perform comprehensive, strategic assessments of the efficacy of the Woods Procedures or FISA accuracy.” …..snip~



Good thing the NSD backed up Horowitz.

[MMC]

That is two things:

1. An ad hom
2. False

Now the Obama appointee isn't credible. LMAO.

[hanger4]

Now the Obama appointee isn't credible. LMAO.

Aaaah hell, give ol @John Galt a break, he was looking at his reflection when said that.

[Common]

The FBI has never in its history played by the rules, they have always had a free run and they basically do whatever they want. To a much lesser degree now but the decades of J. Edgar Hoover should tell us all something

[MMC]

Aaaah hell, give ol @John Galt a break, he was looking at his reflection when said that.

He probably didn't know the NSD Officials backed the Obama appointee. Which isn't surprising. Most leftists don't know what depts are handling matters in the government.

[Peter1469]

FISA court orders DoJ to determine if the FISA warrants were fatally flawed.

The nation’s secretive surveillance court on Friday ordered the government to determine by mid-June whether any of the 29 surveillance applications that the Justice Department’s inspector general recently found to be flawed contained “material misstatements or omissions” that could render them invalid.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz, in a memorandum issued Tuesday, found that all 29 applications his office scrutinized as part of an ongoing review contained errors, suggesting that problems exposed in a wiretap application during the FBI’s probe of President Trump’s 2016 campaign extend far beyond that case alone.

[MMC]

FISA court orders DoJ to determine if the FISA warrants were fatally flawed.

I wonder how many involved Atkinson.