Newly declassified documents show that former FBI director James Comey repeatedly broke the law by improperly receiving and sharing intelligence from surveillance conducted on American citizens.
According to documents obtained by Circa, Comey knew about these violations and hid the crimes from Congress.
Conservativetribune.com reports: According to Circa News, a property of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the powerful but secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court outlined its concerns about the FBI in a series of rulings. Those rulings have now been declassified, and reveal hundreds of privacy violations during Comey’s time at the bureau, according to Circa.
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The court, which hears applications for warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, had information that could stun many Americans.
“The behavior the FBI admitted to a FISA judge just last month ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight the bureau promised was in place years ago,” Circa reported.
The court’s own documents back up this claim.
“The Court is nonetheless concerned about the FBI’s apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI is engaging in similar disclosures of raw … information that have not been reported,” stated a court ruling from April of this year.
In other words, the court responsible for overseeing the FBI’s spy activities suspected that even more abuses had been committed but covered up.
The bureau is normally not allowed to spy on Americans without a warrant, or send and receive unauthorized intelligence that it knows was conducted on citizens within the U.S.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permits surveillance on U.S. citizens who are communicating with foreigners, as long as strict rules are followed. However, declassified documents show that the FBI under Comey often knowingly broke those rules, according to Circa.
“We found several instances in which the FBI acquired communications on the same day that the NSA determined through analysis of intercepted communications that the person was in the United States,” explained a FISA report obtained by Circa News.
If the reports of constant violations are in fact accurate, James Comey may have lied to Congress.
During recent testimony before being fired by Trump, Comey stated that his agency only conducted surveillance on U.S. citizens when it was “lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked.”
The documents reported by Circa News paint a different picture. This new information suggests that Comey was either incompetent at keeping the bureau within the law, or actively allowed illegal activity to continue under his watch.
Americans deserve an FBI director who respects the law, not one who flouts it.
