6 Key Points From Report to Secret Court on FBI Spying

A former Obama administration lawyer who long defended investigating President Donald Trump’s Russian ties and spying on a campaign aide concludes in a new report that the FBI’s proposed reforms are “insufficient” to prevent abuses from occurring again.

The new criticism follows Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s scathing report last month on the FBI’s warrant application under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to eavesdrop electronically on a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.

In doing so, the FBI used an unverified opposition research document paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign as the factual basis for seeking the warrant from the secret FISA court.

The FBI did not disclose the source of its information to the court. It in fact was compiled for Democrats by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, working with the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

After release of the inspector general’s report, the FISA court on Jan. 10 appointed David Kris, a former assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s National Security Division, to oversee reforms to the court’s process for reviewing warrant applications.

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