Posted on 02/15/2018 10:00:03 PM PST by Texas Fossil
Moments ago FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer responded to the requests from the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte. (full pdf’s below – #1 and #2)
There are nuances in each response specific to the statutory roles of each Chairman and the specific requests made by each committee. Reflected in Judge Collyer’s responses is a need for careful consideration of each unique request.
♦House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes holds primary oversight authority over the aggregate Intelligence Community (IC). Chairman Nunes has requested the transcripts from the FISA Court during the DOJ/FBI Title-1 surveillance application over their target, U.S. person Carter Page.
♦House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte holds primary oversight authority over the Department of Justice -including the FISA court- and has requested the actual FISA Title-1 application as submitted by the DOJ/FBI for surveillance of Carter Page.
Judge Collyer responds to both legislative branch chairman from the position of “never previously receiving such requests.” There are separation of power challenges, but also an understanding inherent in the response to Chairman Goodlatte of the unique statutory oversight his committee holds.
(Excerpt) Read more at theconservativetreehouse.com ...
Is the Truth safe to handle? We must decide how to handle the Truth.
We've never had a request like this before?
Couldn’t the chairmen then refer it to him, to direct the judge to comply or to be fired?
It’s probably safe to say that Bob Goodlatte already knows the answer to the underlining question: DOJ FISA application different now from what they presented to FISA Court? That’s basically why Nunes and Goodlatte want to see it and transcripts of they had them of what what was said. Somebody has to be talking behind the scenes because it’s a complete waste of time for them to go fishing ‘publicly’ looking into areas they have no clue what’s going on, they probably DO know here
Yes, I bet you’re right.
This will be interesting to watch.
Translation: “Talk to the hand. Bug off.”
She wasted a lot of words.
Just rename the Politicized FISA Court the Star Chamber and be done with it.
We have seen Judge Roberts in action before.
This is so widespread within the Federal Government that nobody knows exactly how to “contain” it.
Which is good, if it spills from it’s container, we will see most of the pieces.
Jeff Sessions is the one who needs to be relieved of his duties. The judge said that the DOJ has access to all the documents and can release them anytime.
This is unbelievable. Sessions is being held hostage by the DOJ bureaucracy. He is the weakest attorney general ever.
Secret courts... an anathema to everything this nation was created to be.
From the CT article, also to be determined is whether or not the FISA application presented for viewing to a few committee members is identical to the application presented to the FISA court.
IOW, did the Obama DOJ holdovers edit some things in the FISA application viewed by members in an attempt to hide their dirty dealings.
Yep. These “letters” are very public pronouncements of moves on the board. The good guys would like to compare the DOJ version of the FISA application to the one the court holds. Due to the classified nature of the info, it’s compartmentalized, and if the DOJ version is different, somebody gets an orange jumpsuit.
The judge might well be saying “you get the DOJ version and I’ll compare”. This is the same judge who released the document expressing the FISA court’s displeasure with DOJ for abusing the FISA process. Unless she’s been flipped since then, she hardly seems the type to pass the buck.
Well, the Congress could -abolish- that court in an hour and impeach the judge. Since they have THAT power, it stands to reason they should have access to review her work without a separation of powers issue.
The biggest bummer about Sessions is that I’m pretty sure he already planned on and decided to recuse himself before he was even nominated.
Sessions knew he would be nominated. He was first in line for pick of the cabinets and he picked DOJ. Prior to the election or perhaps it was between the election and Jan 20, 2017 he stated (paraphrased from memory) “We are not to re-investigate Hillary or investigate the previous administration”.
The fact that we are now in the territory were the other administration and the loser of the election have to be investigated in order to get the truth out, has gotten everybodies pantys in a bunch because we know wrongdoing was done but they don’t want to act upon it because then it becomes a precedent.
Has such a situation happened in our past? I don’t know. But the left likes to walk boundaries with incursions in weak areas accidental or otherwise. This is Bill & Hillary Clinton’s modus operandi. Think “No controlling legal authority” means run amok of the constitution is okay.
Then in the comments of this article:
BigMamaTEA says:
February 15, 2018 at 11:49 pm
Rob, if you want the real answer…….Years ago when I was researching this….The FISA Court came about because of the Church Committee back in the 70’s. (Named after a Senator Church btw) From my research:
Their hearings exposed secret, arguably illegal wiretapping, bugging, and harassment of American citizens, including Supreme Court justices, reporters, and government officials, all in the name of collecting intelligence about threats to national security. The most notorious case, first exposed in the 1960s and fully documented by the Church Committee, was the wiretapping of Martin Luther King, Jr. by the NSA and by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, who believed him to be part of a Communist conspiracy.
The Church Committee’s investigations also led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978. The FISA court was originally designed to guard executive branch surveillance programs from the public while ensuring the other branches of government could oversee activities.
I also saved this quote from Senator Church at that time…….
“On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, and discussed the NSA, without mentioning it by name:
“ In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (…) Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. (…)
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return” Senator Frank Church.
Thanks. I knew that Bush appointed here to begin with. And that Roberts put her on the FISA Court.
I guess we will she how she plays the game.
I didn’t expect Sessions to investigate anything. My expectations were very low from the start.
What baffles me is that he is actively trying to obstruct the work of the Nunes committee. It’s as if the DOJ was still operating under Loretta Lynch. Sessions kept all the Obama people in place.
And Trump can’t do anything about it because any interference will be used by Mueller to build an obstruction case.
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