FISA Warrants.

Greetings from the remote outpost along Wisconsin’s northern border.

This series is a deeper dive into the current call for ending the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But first, some background of this 114-year-old institution.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U.S. counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.

On the FBI website, here they state their mission.

We will use the excellent article from The Federalist as a basis and starting point for this deeper dive into the more recent issues, ineptitude, incompetence, and undisguised politicization at the forefront of the current FBI daily operations.

FISA Warrants - Back in 2017, you couldn’t listen to or read any news without hearing about FISA Warrants.  The FBI was using these against the Trump Administration and individuals within the Trump Administration.  So just what is a FISA Warrant?

Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978. FISA provides a statutory framework for government agencies to obtain authorization to gather foreign intelligence by means of (1) electronic surveillance, (2) physical searches, (3) pen registers and trap and trace (PR/TT) devices (which record or decode dialing, routing, addressing, or signaling information), or (4) the production of certain business records. Agencies typically request authorization for such activities from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a specialized court created by FISA to act as a neutral arbiter of agency requests for FISA orders. 

Were there problems with the FISA warrants related to the Trump Administration?

Two of four FISA warrants against Carter Page declared invalid

The Privacy Problems Revealed by the FBI’s Internal Review of the Trump-Russia Investigation

Inspector General report on FBI's FISA abuse tells us one thing: We need radical reform.

The three cited links give some additional information about the problems within the FBI during the Trump Administration.  The Federalist article is a great start. Hopefully, the additional background and links provided here will help you understand more about the issues and problems with the current FBI and its bureaucratic governmental structure.