Watchdog says FBI violations with FISA warrants went beyond Russia probe

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Watchdog says FBI violations with FISA warrants went beyond Russia probe

The Justice Department inspector general has determined that FBI violations of surveillance warrant rules in recent years extended beyond the Trump-Russia investigation, saying such missteps have undermined the bureau’s ability to achieve a “scrupulously accurate” standard for all Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, in a memo, released Tuesday and sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray, revealed that his team had been conducting a review of the bureau’s practices related to so-called “Woods Procedures.” Those rules require agents -- seeking authorization to surveil an individual -- to independently verify facts presented by a third party before including them in a FISA application before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

“We do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy, or that the process is working as it was intended to help achieve the ‘scrupulously accurate’ standard for FISA applications,” Horowitz wrote in the report.“We believe that the repeated weaknesses in the FBI’s execution of the Woods Procedures one each of the 29 FISA applications we revised to date….raise significant questions about the extent to which the FBI is complying with its own requirement that FISA applications be supported by documentation in the Woods File as part of its efforts to ensure that applications are ‘scrupulously accurate,’” Horowitz wrote.

The FBI, in response to the watchdog's memo, said that Horowitz's "findings underscore the importance of the more than 40 corrective actions that Director Wray ordered late last year."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department, in a response to Horowitz's findings included in the report, defended the FBI under Wray, saying that the bureau has "already undertaken many changes to improve FISA application processing," and added that FBI general counsel has "directed every relevant division to account for and ensure the proper maintenance" of FISA subfiles.