House Republicans demand hearing on FBI FISA failures after new bombshell revelations
Rep. Jim Jordan, top Republican on House Judiciary Committee, demands Democrat hold hearing on FBI inaccuracies in surveillance warrant applications.
House Republicans late Tuesday renewed their demands that the House Judiciary Committee hold hearings into the FBI spying on Americans after a new review found agents routinely used inaccurate or incomplete evidence to justify surveillance warrants.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the panel's ranking member, sent Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a letter requesting the hearings in response to a special investigative memo released by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz earlier in the day.
That memo warned FBI Director Christopher Wray that a review of more than two dozen Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants authorizing spying on Americans in intelligence and terrorism investigations found all had failed to comply with so-called Woods Procedures designed to protect civil liberties. Most of the applications contained factual errors, unsubstantiated evidence and other problems, Horowitz disclosed.
The findings showed the problems first detected during the Russia collusion investigation, in which an uncorroborated and erroneous Steele dossier was used to justify a spy warrant targeting the Trump campaign in 2016, are far more widespread across the FBI.
"The Committee must not allow the FBI's extraordinary power to electronically surveil Americans to be so haphazardly rubber-stamped with incorrect, unsubstantiated or erroneous supporting information," Jordan wrote.
Jordan's minority GOP colleagues in the House, have been clamoring for hearings since evidence first emerged of FBI abuses and wrongdoing in the now-debunked Russia collusion investigation.
You can read Jordan's letter here.