Yo, FISA Judge: If You’re So ‘Offended’ About Abuses NOW Why Did You Blow Off This 2018 Warning?
Is this judge actually angry that her Court was used to perpetrate a fraud? Or is she just looking for a scapegoat after the fact?
Now that the Horowitz report has laid out the ‘Seventeen Points’ of failure, the whole country can see just how screwed up and biased the process really was.
FISC Judge Rosemary Collyer, as we reported, has some harsh words for the FBI’s lack of proper oversight in the FISA warrant process.
She ought to, she is the judge who signed off on the warrants that precipitated a national crisis.
Can we take her ‘outrage’ at face value, or is this a case of CYA?
Nunes contacted her not once, but TWICE about this issue, in 2018, and she did nothing about it. Why is she suddenly so shocked and surprised now?
Here’s Nunes:
My response to FISC court letter. Republicans warned court 2X in 2018… pic.twitter.com/oNODqy61hc
— Devin Nunes (@DevinNunes) December 18, 2019
You might ask, maybe she just didn’t put much weight in Nunes’ testimony after he had been so ruthlessly savaged by the media?
Ok, but that doesn’t explain what Mark Levin told us on his show Tuesday night:
“I want to admonish this judge. She had an opportunity to act when it mattered. Back on April 20, 2017, the Landmark Legal foundation, under its president, Pete Hutchinson, filed a motion — a secret motion — with this court. And it was a motion informing the judge about violations that had occurred based on published reports.”
Anyone paying attention might notice that this motion was filed BEFORE the submission of the 4th and final FISA warrant.
What did our super-offended-at-FBI-abuses judge do with this secret filing by Landmark Legal Foundation?
Just five days after it was filed, the judge ruled as follows:
“Order: the court has received a pleading titled ‘motion for leave to appear as Amicus Curi […]’ submitted by Landmark Legal foundation on April 20, 2017. Although presented as a request to appear as an amicus curiae friend of the court, there is no matter pending before the court with respect to which such an appearance would be proper, therefore order denies request.”
Imagine where we might all be today if the judge had actually taken these warnings seriously.
Judge Collyer may satisfy her own moral outrage by pointing an accusing finger at those who took advantage of her court, and demand that they review THIER culpability and THIER role in trampling the rights of innocent citizens. That outrage is well-placed, if overdue.
Perhaps she could spare a moment of self-reflection for what actions SHE took or didn’t take, and what warning signs she blew off.
Would we all perhaps be in a different place today if she had challenged that 4th FISA application instead of rubber-stamping it?
Would we all perhaps be in a different place today if she had followed up on the TWO times Nunes contacted her about it more than a year ago?
Of course we would.
But judges are human too, and like anyone else, they are prone to the same temptation of passing the buck as the rest of us.