by CHQ Staff
In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by our friends at Judicial Watch the Department of Justice release this bombshell admission:
[National Security Division] FOIA consulted [Office of Intelligence] … to identify and locate records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request…. [Office of Intelligence] determined … that there were no records, electronic or paper, responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request with regard to Carter Page. [Office of Intelligence] further confirmed that the [Foreign Surveillance Court] considered the Page warrant applications based upon written submissions and did not hold any hearings. (Emphasis ours.)
Just make this clear; the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time advisor who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants. The initial warrant was first issued in 2016 and subsequently renewed three times.
In February, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a memo criticizing the FISA targeting of Carter Page. The memo details how the “minimally corroborated” Clinton-DNC dossier was an essential part of the FBI and DOJ’s applications for surveillance warrants to spy on Page.
Judicial Watch recently filed a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking the transcripts of all hearings related to the surveillance of Carter Page.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in an email, “It is disturbing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts rubber-stamped the Carter Page spy warrants and held not one hearing on these extraordinary requests to spy on the Trump team.”
Fitton went on to observe, “Perhaps the court can now hold hearings on how justice was corrupted by material omissions that Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, a conflicted Bruce Ohr, a compromised Christopher Steele, and anti-Trumper Peter Strzok were all behind the ‘intelligence’ used to persuade the courts to approve the FISA warrants that targeted the Trump team.”
It is difficult to characterize the FISA Court’s action in the Carter Page case as anything other than corrupt and totally anti-constitutional.
When you get right down to it, the entire Mueller investigation is based upon the Obama administration’s abuse of their control over secret intelligence information, and the FISA Court’s failure to give even the most cursory scrutiny to its applications to gather that intelligence.
The entire circular logic behind the FISA warrants that led to the surveillance of Carter Page and other members of the Trump team was founded upon abuse of secret intelligence gathering and information, because the surveillance turned-up no new information.
The entire process was intended to put British spy Christopher Steele’s “dirty dossier” into the public eye and through that process justify spying on Trump and his associates.
As our friend Mark Tapscott reported for Lifezette, Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials were pushing what Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called a “self-licking ice-cream cone” when they applied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court for approval to spy on Carter Page.
“Self-licking ice cream cone. FISA docs cite Clinton-DNC Dossier, leak of Dossier to media, and leak of Dossier info through Dem Senator Harry Reid. Corrupt dishonesty to get court approval to spy on @RealDonaldTrump team,” Fitton tweeted.
And Fitton was right: The phrase a “self-licking ice cream cone” refers to “a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself, Tapscott reminded us.
As Fitton noted on FOX News, the FBI’s initial application and three subsequent requests for renewal of the surveillance authority the FISA court granted against Carter Page — who was briefly a Trump foreign policy adviser during the 2016 campaign — relied almost exclusively on the unproven Steele dossier, which was continually recycled to justify more spying on Trump.
As we’ve said before, Judicial Watch is one of the last bulwarks of constitutional liberty in an increasingly corrupt Washington, DC, because without Judicial Watch lawsuits prying the information out of the FBI and Department of Justice none of this would be known.
