The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the court created to oversee its implementation are going to be in the news quite a bit in the upcoming weeks.
This is because the FISA court plays a central role in the ongoing “Spygate” scandal, which is only the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States, dwarfing even the Nixon Watergate scandal.
New evidence has surfaced that it wasn’t only former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page who was the subject of FISA court hearings during the 2016 presidential campaign. At least three other persons in the Trump campaign were targets of FISA court hearings, according to a member of Congress who sits on the House Judiciary Committee.
While questioning Lynch, Jackson Lee made the following assertion:
“I want to talk about the spring, summer, and autumn of 2016. Carter Page, at the time, was suspected of being a Russian asset; George Papadopoulos had told the Australian ambassador that Russians had Hillary [Clinton] emails; Paul Manafort had been named Trump campaign manager; Michael Flynn was Trump’s chief national security adviser and foreign policy adviser and, just yesterday, had a continuance in his sentencing.
Lynch replied, “Yes.”
Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer Bradley Weinsheimer then objected to Jackson Lee’s question, saying it “potentially gets into possibly classified information, and also equities in an ongoing investigation.”
The fact that the DOJ lawyer there to observe Lynch’s testimony at this closed-door hearing instantly jumped in to try to end that line of questioning by Jackson Lee is revealing.Ross wrote, “Wondering whose name is behind the black box in the less-redacted Michael Flynn court filing.”
The section of the new filing that Ross screenshot for his tweet states:
“The defendant [Flynn] has provided substantial assistance in a criminal investigation of Bijan Rafiekian, Ekim Alptekin [name redacted] being conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia (“EDVA”) and the DOJ National Security Division (“NSD”) for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”), acting as agents of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General (18 U.S.C. Section 951) and making materially false statements to the federal government (18 U.S.C. Section 1001).”
One of the reasons Weinsheimer was so quick to try to end that line of questioning was to protect ongoing cases still being investigated that involve Flynn.
For almost two years, there’s been no official acknowledgment that there were any other FISA warrants issued targeting Trump campaign personnel.
All of the real reporters and researchers digging into Spygate have seen some evidence that there was a whole lot more than just one single FISA warrant on Page, but much of that evidence was indirect and circumstantial. No DOJ or FBI or intelligence official would publicly state anything that would verify the existence of any such warrants.
- Carter Page
- Paul Manafort
- George Papadopoulos
- Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
It’s now nearing the end of May, which means the release of Horowitz’s report is closer than ever. The only question is, which comes first: the declassification by Barr of the first batch of FISA surveillance documents, or the Horowitz report?
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