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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| A Foreign Power's Recruitment Effort Is Not a Basis for a FISA Court Warrant |
| 2018-03-09 |
| BLUF: [National Review] At the Washington Examiner, Byron York picks up on something I wish I had highlighted: The Schiff memo’s focus on past Russian intelligence efforts (in 2013) to recruit Page to become an agent for Russia. As Byron notes, the Schiff memo claims that "Steele’s information about Page was consistent with the FBI’s assessment of Russian intelligence efforts to recruit him and his connections to Russian persons of interest." The fact that a foreign power is trying to recruit an American to become an agent for that foreign power is not a sufficient basis to issue a surveillance warrant against the American under FISA. It would, of course, be sufficient to issue a warrant against the foreign spies who are making the recruitment efforts, but it is not enough for a warrant against the American citizen who is the target of the recruitment effort. To get a surveillance warrant under FISA (i.e., the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as codified at Title 50, U.S. Code, Sections 1801 et seq.), the FBI and the Justice Department must establish probable cause that the person to be monitored under the warrant is acting as an active, purposeful agent of a foreign power ‐ not that the foreign power hopes to turn him into such an agent. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #2 The Humpty-Dumpty Theory of Language applied to, well, everything: 'Might is Right!' |
| Posted by: magpie 2018-03-09 10:54 |
| #1 Rules are for losers |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-03-09 09:34 |