What’s the difference between sufficiently sloppy and willful? Either way calls for cleanup.
I agree this totally calls for a cleanup either way. The big fear of FISA (by conservatives) is that it will be used against Americans for political reasons. It wasn’t so long ago that the left feared the same thing.
Anyone who has had any serious exposure to government knows that virtually every program is eventually abused. It’s how all big bureaucracies operate. Even though FISA warrants have all sorts of “safeguards,” one can easily imagine bureaucrats turning it into a pencil whipping process, i.e. the boss wants this so I’m gonna sign off on it. A 90 day review? The old document gets a few tweaks and is resubmitted.
I don’t really know how to fix something like this, because we want an intelligence community that can stop foreign attacks against the USA, but we also want liberty for Americans. It’s a tough situation, but we should side on liberty when in doubt.
So that was the point I was making. I don’t really know what motivated Comey and others to use FISA to spy on Trump. It may have been political, but I dislike it when either political side ascribes the worst possible motives to the other side.
BTW, if any laws were broken, I definitely want to see the perpetrators charged, but so far, we aren’t hearing anything about criminal charges. The procedures were apparently followed. If Comey is asked why he signed the FISA application, he’s going to say it’s because he thought members of the Trump administration were colluding with Russia. He’s certainly not going to admit he knowingly lied, right?