Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee boycotted a hearing today after they accused Chairman Adam Schiff of ignoring abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Here is the letter the Republicans sent to Schiff:
From Fox News:
The House Intelligence Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies and Advance Research (STAR) held a hearing on “Emerging Technologies and National Security” on Wednesday. Every GOP member skipped the forum, blasting it as a “publicity” event.In a letter obtained by Fox News, Reps. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Chris Stewart, R-Utah, the ranking members of the committee and subcommittee, respectively, joined GOP colleagues in blasting Schiff, D-Calif., for not holding hearings on FISA in the wake of the IG report.“Under your chairmanship, the House Intelligence Committee has strayed far from its mandate of overseeing the Intelligence Community. In fact, we have gone months at a time in which we’ve hardly held any oversight-related briefings or hearings at all,” they wrote Wednesday.“During this period of inadequate oversight, numerous critical issues pertinent to this Committee’s jurisdiction were ignored,” they continued, noting that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued his FISA report on Dec. 9 which identified “seventeen serious shortcomings related to the conduct” of the surveillance of former Trump campaign foreign policy aide Carter Page.The Republicans argued that the committee is “uniquely positioned to consider” the “serious legal and policy questions” that arose from Horowitz’s report.“The IG Report was followed by the release of a declassified assessment by the Department of Justice acknowledging that at least two of the four FISA applications lacked probable cause,” they continued. “Despite the seriousness of these issues and our clear jurisdiction, you have failed to hold a single briefing or hearing on this matter.”They added: “Until the Committee prioritizes oversight activities related to urgent and critical concerns, Republican Members cannot support distractions from our core responsibilities.”
The IG report confirmed the FBI used unverified information from the dossier to request surveillance on Page.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) even found “at least two of the FBI’s surveillance applications to monitor Page lacked probable cause.”
Unfortunately, this is nothing new when it comes to the FBI trying to get around our 4th Amendment rights. FISC has ordered numerous investigations into “FBI surveillance abuses over the past several years.”
However, FISC has never once ordered the FBI “to reverify several potentially impacted warrant applications.”
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