Lawmakers React To Scathing IG Report On FBI Abuses: ‘Absolutely Outrageous’

Lawmakers are expressing alarm over the release Tuesday of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, which found egregious failures in a random sample acquired by his investigators to oversee suspected FBI’s abuse in obtaining warrants with the secret court to spy on Americans.

In Horowitz’s interim report, investigators revealed that they could not review the bureau’s original Woods Files for four of the 29 selected FISA applications. Why? Because the bureau could not locate them and, in 3 of these instances, did not know if they ever existed. In the audit report sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Horowitz said “as a result of our audit work to date and as described below, we do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy.”

Yesterday’s report demonstrates unequivocally that there has been a major systemic failure at the FBI, David Schoen, Civil Rights Attorney

The report, which was initiated as part of the IG’s ongoing investigation into the FBI’s now debunked probe into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, also revealed that there were apparent errors or ‘inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 applications that the investigators reviewed.” Moreover, Horowitz’s team also interviewed FBI officials who indicated that there were no efforts by the bureau to use existing FBI and National Security Division oversight mechanisms to perform comprehensive, strategic assessments of the efficacy of the Woods Procedures or FISA accuracy.

Ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes, told SaraACarter.com Tuesday that “regardless of whatever ‘reforms’ FBI leaders voluntarily adopt, it’s clear their operations require close oversight by congressional leaders who actually care about Americans’ civil liberties and will not approve of improper spying when it’s aimed at their political opponents.”

When Nunes was Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee his team of investigators were the first to reveal the litany of abuses that occurred at the FBI. In fact, those abuses were first reported by Nunes then in his committee’s Russia report released in April, 2018.

David Schoen, a civil rights and criminal defense attorney, told this reporter that the “IG’s March 30, 2020 report of his preliminary findings concerning FISA applications during a five-year period from 2014 to 2019 is nothing less than shocking.”

“He has found a startling number of instances in which there was no supporting documentation for...

Read More HERE