The House sub-committee on Oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) met earlier this week on Capitol Hill.
The FISA Court was originally set up to empower federal agencies to spy on lone wolf terrorists and conduct roving wiretaps on potential terrorists.
In 2016 and 2017 the Obama administration used the FISA Court to spy illegally on the opposition Republican party and Trump campaign and administration.
On Thursday Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) defended spying on the opposition party.
Rep. Steve Cohen also defended the DOJ’s and FBI’s handling of the FISA court.
“It appears that some on the other side have got a problem with a lot of things that have gone on in law enforcement,” the Tennessee Democrat said. “I read all those FISA applications in the Carter Page and saw nothing wrong with any of them.”
Rep. John Ratcliffe, the Texas Republican who withdrew from consideration as the director of national intelligence earlier this year, said he disagreed.
“I’ll just leave it at the inspector general has written a report and we’ll see who’s right and we’ll see who’s wrong,” Ratcliffe said. “And I’m afraid, unfortunately, that the inspector general is going to find that folks on my side of the aisle are right that FISA procedures were abused and were not followed and will offer recommendations to correct that. But again, we’ll see.”
Here is video from this week’s hearing.
