House Judiciary Committee ranking member Devin Nunes suggests that the latest move by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is a good reason to eliminate FISC.
FISC presiding Judge James E. Boasberg appointed liberal lawyer David Kris as Amicus Curiae (impartial advisor to the court) in order to ensure that the evidence submitted by the FBI for FISA warrants in the future is accurate in order to comply with the Inspector General's report in December 2019.
From his "short" blog on the IG report on Crossfire Hurricane, Kris expressed his opinion of AG Barr and Clinton's AG Janet Reno. (Janet Reno of Waco, Texas and Branch Davidians fame.)
In my professional lifetime, Attorney General Janet Reno probably represents the end of the spectrum closest to pure law enforcement, farthest away from politics. Barr is pretty clearly at the other end, and when his second tour as attorney general is done, we may be able to look back and assess authoritatively (perhaps with the benefit of an inspector general report) whether and to what extent he pushed the edges of the spectrum further (or too far) toward the political.
David Kris criticized the "Nunes Memo" shortly after it was released in February of 2018. The memo was the work of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, exposing the corrupt Russia Collusion investigation which is called Crossfire Hurricane. Michael Horowitz, in his IG report of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, largely corroborated the Nunes Memo. Kris:
The central irony of the memo prepared by House intelligence chairman Devin Nunes, we now know, is that it tried to deceive the American people in precisely the same way that it falsely accused the FBI of deceiving the FISA Court.
This video compilation provides an accurate sampling of Kris's view of the president. He, like the rest of the resistance, makes assertions unsupported by evidence or reality. Keep in mind that everything he accuses the president of has been debunked by the Mueller Report and the Horowitz report.
On the appointment of David Kris to oversee reforms at the FBI after the Inspector General's report on FISA warrant abuses, Rep. Devin Nunes commented,
"It's hard to imagine a worse person the FISC could have chosen, outside Comey, McCabe, or Schiff. It’s a ridiculous choice. The FBI lied to the FISC, and to help make sure that doesn’t happen again, the FISC chose an FBI apologist who denied and defended those lies. The FISC is setting its own credibility on fire.”
David Kris is an apologist who has failed to see, even when presented with evidence, that both the FBI and FISC were incompetent or worse.
He defended the FISC on the Carter Page FISAs, saying that they were subjected to exacting scrutiny and that FISC is not just a rubber stamp.
In sum, the court’s letter and various public statements, as well as the statistical evidence, show that FISA applications are subjected to exacting scrutiny; the FISA Court is not a rubber stamp. And they show that this scrutiny is effectuated in many ways, most of them informal... The absence of a “hearing” on the Carter Page FISAs does not in any way suggest that the FISA Court treated the applications casually or carelessly.
Congressman Mark Meadows said that Republicans in Congress will be asking Judge Boasberg to remove Kris from the process. He also said if the FBI and FISC do not implement the necessary reforms, the FISC may not be reauthorized in the spring.
In a blog, Kris acknowledges the Horowitz report and the problems in the FBI and FISC, but he also continued to attack the president, AG Barr, and John Durham, suggesting that they are the real problem - which does not come across as impartial.
Go here for more on David Kris.
Watch Devin Nunes explain why David Kris is a bad choice to oversee reforms at the FISC.