The Department of Justice admitted in December that two of the FBI’s four surveillance warrants to electronically monitor ex-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page were invalid, according to a declassified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order published on Thursday.
James Boasberg, presiding judge of the U.S. FISA Court, wrote on January 7 that the DOJ had assessed in its filings to the court last month that “if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power” in the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.
Therefore, Boasberg wrote, “[t]he Court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the Court’s authorizations in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679 were not valid,” referring to two of the FISA warrants.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found in December that while the FBI did not launch its Trump-Russia probe and monitor Page out of political bias against President Donald Trump, the agency made “many basic and fundamental errors” in the FISA application process.
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