Dec. 9, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to the release of the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz report on abuses of the FISA process in 2016 against the Trump campaign and Attorney General William Barr’s statement that “In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source”:
“It is clear from the IG report and Attorney General’s response that there are no safeguards against the FBI abusing civil liberties protections in the Constitution. One of our greatest fears about this review was that it would find that the DOJ and agencies have unbridled discretion to conduct investigations, obtain surveillance and destroy lives based on what turns out were concocted, false allegations. Lying to the FBI is a crime. And the FBI regularly prosecutes citizens on the most tenuous grounds of a failure to be forthcoming and telling the truth. Yet it doesn’t appear FBI officials misleading the FISA court, presenting false information to the court, omitting critical exculpatory facts from the court and failing to verify their principal source are not subject to the same the letter of the law.
“Apparently none of that wrongdoing is prohibited by FISA. If anything the grave consequences of political spying based on fake information and its underlying threat to our republic should warrant treating said activity much more harshly than simply misstating a fact to an FBI agent. This just one area that the FISA system is broken.
“With FISA reauthorization pushed off until March 15, it is incumbent on Congress to stop messing around with impeachment and deal with these fundamental civil liberties questions. Political domestic surveillance by intelligence and law enforcement agencies cannot be tolerated and this should not be a partisan issue.”
Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.
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