ACLJ Files FOIA To Find Out Why the Deep State FBI Has Been Abusing the Law and Spying on American Citizens . . . AGAIN

The Deep State FBI, empowered by the Biden Administration, continues to violate federal law and spy on United States citizens. Is the FBI out of control?

The ACLJ just took direct action to get to the bottom of these most recent violations, and who knew about them, to help hold the FBI accountable to the American people.

In a recently declassified opinion, the presiding judge of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) even stated that “there still appear to be widespread violations” throughout the FBI when it comes to unlawful surveillance and gathering of information.

As the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) defines it, Section 702 is “a key provision of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States, with the compelled assistance of electronic communication service providers, to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

As we previously told you:

The matter involves so-called “warrantless” searches of data collected by the National Security Agency (NSA). In 1978, Congress created the FISC (sometimes called the FISA Court) through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). Congress amended the Act in 2008 and legalized the use of “warrantless” wiretaps in Section 702 of the Act. These actions were created due to the ever-growing threat of international terrorism. In our high-tech era, the term “wiretapping” is not quite apropos. The law deals with the collection of all manner of information through phone calls, emails, and text messages.

The data is collected by the NSA. But three other entities can also receive the raw info: the CIA, the National Counterterrorism Task Center, and the FBI. However, the FBI is the only one of these with a law enforcement mission. They can use the information to arrest an individual and to recommend charges.

Two Congressmen – Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-4) and Rep. Andy Biggs (AZ-5) – recently sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray citing “a pattern of abuses and deficiencies in the FBI’s FISA processes” and demanding “a detailed accounting of every instance since December 2019 in which the FBI has queried, accessed, otherwise used information obtained pursuant to section 702 for purposes unrelated to national security.”

The Congressmen also demanded answers regarding multiple specific violations, including a variety of incidents regarding searches of section 702 FISA information without first obtaining court permission. Shockingly, the FISA Court seems to be letting the FBI get away with this by blaming it on COVID-19. National intelligence officials claim people targeted by FISA warrants plummeted due to the pandemic.

This isn’t the first time the FBI has been caught abusing procedures to spy on Americans. Remember when we told you how it used the duplicitous Steele dossier, which it later admitted it knew was specious and unreliable, as evidence to spy on members of the Trump campaign? As we told you then:

With the release of the House Intelligence Committee Memo, it is manifestly clear that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI participated in a fraud on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in order to surveil Carter Page, a U.S. citizen. The FBI and the DOJ deliberately and intentionally advanced unverified opposition research paid for by one political party (the Democratic National Committee) designed to harm the opposing party by creating a fictional Russian collusion story as reliable fact. All this took place in the midst of a U.S. presidential election.

So why has the FBI been spying on American citizens? And should we ask, why are they doing it AGAIN? The ACLJ just submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FBI to find out the answer.

Similar to the letter sent by Representatives Jordan and Biggs, our FOIA requested all “records pertaining to the FBI’s knowledge and efforts surrounding its apparent widespread violations of privacy rules in conducting surveillance and background investigations in connection to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).” We also demanded records that would shed light on other potential abuses of collecting or querying information collected for other purposes, like certain types of background checks.

It is imperative to determine why this keeps happening to determine if the problem can be rooted out and how deep it really goes.

When previously asked about the Carter Page debacle, FBI Director Wray specifically said:

“The failures highlighted in that report are unacceptable – period. They don’t reflect who the FBI is as an institution and they cannot be repeated.”

Unfortunately, it appears those so-called “failures” HAVE been repeated, and they DO reflect the FBI. It can no longer be chalked up to rogue agents. There appears to be a systemic infection of abuse at the FBI, and it might be time to amputate and start over.

We await the FBI’s response to our FOIA. We will take it to federal court in Washington, D.C., if it does not comply; and we are prepared to pursue this all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary to get to the bottom of these abuses. The American people deserve the truth, just as they deserve their constitutionally and statutorily protected privacy from Deep State actors.