FISA court dodges GOP questions about 'clearly biased' Obama official who worked on reforms

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court dodged questions posed by Republican congressmen concerned about its selection of Obama official and longtime FBI defender David Kris to advise it on FISA reforms.

Judge James Boasberg, the FISA court’s presiding judge, did not mention Kris’s name in the two-page letter obtained by the Washington Examiner, but said the input the court would receive from the hand-picked adviser, known as an amicus curiae, is “purely advisory, and it is the court, not the amicus, that oversees each matter and determines its outcome.”

Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina sent the FISA court a letter in mid-January, asking specific questions about which candidates aside from Kris the spy court had considered. In their letter, the lawmakers asked whether the court had considered biased writings and statements Kris made about the matter he was asked to about Trump campaign associate Carter Page, his criticisms of former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, and his defenses of the FBI’s Trump-Russia actions.

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