My understanding is that of course the President appoints judges, but for the FISA court, the Chief Justice appoints existing judges for that special duty.
So, my view is that Roberts specifically targeted Obama-appointed judges to serve on the FISA court.
I see; so there is no set of “FISA” judges per se, they are drawn from an existing pool of judges? Interesting. It appears that Roberts is a wholely owned enetity then.
Appointment process[edit]
The court’s judges[28] are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States without confirmation or oversight by the U.S. Congress.[29] This gives the chief justice the ability to appoint like-minded judges and create a court without diversity.[30][31] “The judges are hand-picked by someone who, through his votes on the Supreme Court, we have come to learn has a particular view on civil liberties and law enforcement”, Theodore Ruger, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said with respect to Chief Justice John Roberts. “The way the FISA is set up, it gives him unchecked authority to put judges on the court who feel the same way he does.”[29] And Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, added, “Since FISA was enacted in 1978, we’ve had three chief justices, and they have all been conservative Republicans, so I think one can worry that there is insufficient diversity.”[32]
Since May 2014, however, four of the five judges appointed by Chief Justice Roberts to the FISA Court were appointed to their prior federal court positions by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
There are some reform proposals. Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut proposed that each of the chief judges of the 12 major appeals courts select a district judge for the surveillance court; the chief justice would still pick the review panel that hears rare appeals of the court’s decisions, but six other Supreme Court justices would have to sign off. Another proposal authored by Representative Adam Schiff of California would give the president the power to nominate judges for the court, subject to Senate approval, while Representative Steve Cohen proposed that Congressional leaders pick eight of the court’s members.[33]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court