Jordan seeks new evidence about FBI actions regarding FISA abuse

Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee's top Republican, is asking Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz to find out more about how the FBI is fixing significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses uncovered by the DOJ watchdog.

Woods Procedures require the FBI to have documentation backing every factual claim in a FISA application, but the Ohio Republican notes in a May 1 letter that the IG's March 30, 2020 Management Advisory Memorandum revealed that in a review of 29 FISA applications, the FBI uncovered significant issues in the Woods files of 25 applications and could not even find the Woods files for the other four applications.

Jordan wants the FBI to provide an update with any alterations it has made to Woods Procedures following the March 30 memo that detailed significant failures.

He also wants to know what action the federal law enforcement agency has pursued to find the missing Woods files related to the four FISA applications. And if they have not yet found the files, the congressman wants to know why the agency has failed to find them.

Jordan also asks for information about how the FISAs were utilized "in non-FISA contexts, including but not limited to criminal indictments, sentencing memoranda, non-FISA search warrants, and other court filings."

And he requests an approximate timeline for when the OIG will conclude the stages of its audit and eventually release its report. The watchdog in December 2019 began an audit of FISA applications aimed at U.S. Persons.