FISA

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) entertains applications made by the US Government for approval of electronic surveillance. The court only hears the governments side of the story so any evidence presented must be verified. In order to listen in on Carter Page the FBI needed approval from the FISA court. They presented evidence that was not verified which contained the Steele dossier which was later found to be inaccurate. Recent revelations detail that the FBI knew this info was not verified. Regardless the warrant was issued and the FBI begin to listen in on conversation from Carter Page. There is a rule that once issued the FBI can then listen in on anyone that Page contacts and up the chain it went to where the FBI listen in on most of the people in the Trump administration. The FBI later apologize to the FISA court and took steps to see that it would not happen again. What they learned became part of the special prosecutors investigation into the claim of Trump/Russia collusion. Though the FBI regrets the numerous “errors and omissions” it made in a series of wiretap warrant requests to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as an alleged “Russian agent," it insists they were benign mistakes. However, newly discovered records reveal no fewer than 10 instances, starting as early as 2009, in which top officials at FBI headquarters came to possess evidence that Page was acting on behalf of the CIA and the FBI itself, yet hid this exculpatory evidence from a secret federal surveillance court.