“I don’t trust you.”
So said Rep Mike Garcia to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Garcia accused Wray of standing relatively silent and passive about “the biggest national security threat” to the U.S. – referring to the southern border — and refused to give “little credence” in the director’s ability to do his job or lead the “brave agents” below him.
“I don’t trust you to protect us,” Garcia said. “I think because of your inability to lead and also shape the policies and the DOJ and at the White House, we are now in a more precarious position than we were, I would submit, than we were on September 10th of 2001.”
Wray was testifying about threats to the country in a hearing about FBI budget requests which coincidentally took place during the discussions about renewing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
I don’t trust him either. The FBI has been fabulous for certain “crimes”
Watching Chris Wray beg for FISA makes me wonder if he’d have more credibility had FBI not spent its resources arresting grandmothers who sang at abortion clinics, took selfies at Capitol on Jan 6, or parents who spoke at school board meetings? FBI ruined its own reputation.
Wray is anything but transparent. He refuses to take a stance for much other than more money. Whenever an FBI abuse occurs he assures us that steps have been taken to address them but never is specific. When an FBI lawyer forged a document to falsely implicate guilt for a victim the lawyer got a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, a 75-year-old Trump accountant is sent to Rikers for 5 years for a minor count of perjury. I’d have asked Wray if the FBI was interested in those in Dearborn who chanted “Death to America.”
Now we are supposed to trust him again with the renewal of FISA. Speaker Mike Johnson was reluctant to vote for renewal of section 702 without a requirement for a warrant when spying on Americans but had a come to Jesus meeting in which he had an epiphany.
When I was a member of Judiciary I saw the abuses of the FBI, the terrible abuses over and over and over… and then when I became Speaker I went to the SCIF and got the confidential briefing on sort of the other perspective on that to understand the necessity of section 702 of FISA and how important it is for national security. And it gave me a different perspective.
Right. Jeff Carlson had an interesting spin on that.
Intelligence Community: “Here’s your file…Now about that reauthorization…”
Other Republicans are also in favor
Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that it would be “extremely dangerous” if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reauthorization is not passed.
We never have any examples presented to us. Instead, blind acceptance is demanded.
Then there are those who insist on the need for a warrant when spying on Americans in violation of their 4th Amendment rights. Count me as one of them. The FBI has egregiously abused the process
SAN FRANCISCO, May 19 (Reuters) – A U.S. court found that the FBI improperly searched for information in a U.S. database of foreign intelligence 278,000 times over several years, including on Americans suspected of crimes, according to a ruling released on Friday.
The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
The searches occurred in the course of U.S. crime investigations including the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and protests after the 2020 killing of George Floyd, the court said.
The Last Refuge makes a great case for denying renewal of Section 702.
5) Approximately 30% of those 3.4 million search queries were outside the rules and regulations that govern warrantless searches, what the politically correct government calls “non-compliant searches.”
6) That means more than 1 million searches of private documents and communication of Americans were illegal and outside the EXISTING rules and/or laws.
You really think a process where 10,000 violations were recorded in 2016, and has now exploded to 1,000,000 can be reformed?
7) Horowitz also admitted that somewhere north of 10,000 federal employees have access to conduct these searches of the NSA database; a database which contains the electronic data of every single American, cont….
8) …including emails, text messages, social media posts, instant messages, direct messages, phone calls, geolocation identifiers, purchases by electronic funds, banking records and any keystroke any American person puts into any electronic device for any reason.
9) In 2018 CTH revealed that FBI and DOJ/FBI contractors had done more than 1,000 illegal searches using the NSA database, targeting Republican primary candidates from Nov 2015 through May 2016. These stunning admissions were from the NSA’s own reporting to the FISA court.
10) Although the number of the illegal search queries were redacted, we know the number is four digits from the size of the redacted text. More than 1,000 and less than 9,999.
11) FAST FORWARD TO 2023 – April 27, 2023, IG Horowitz outlined that more than 1.1 million illegal FISA-702 searches of this database were conducted in 2021 during the first year of the Joe Biden administration.
@SpeakerJohnson !!! Hello ????
…@SpeakerJohnson 17) If the OIG is now admitting FISA laws have been so comprehensively corrupted such that 3.4 million searches by more than 10,000 federal employees and govt contractors now have access, there is no way that any reasonably intelligent person should support such reauthorization.
Be sure to read the whole thing. It is abuse on a galactic scale.
So, without a requirement for a warrant to spy on Americans, no.
Not just no.
F**K NO.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.