The FBI would rather have Americans believe they just don’t know how to do their jobs rather than thinking they were politically biased against Trump. At least that’s how the IG report spin has appeared to this editor. No no no, they weren’t targeting Trump because of their political affiliation, they just made a ton of mistakes.
Oopsie, their bad.
And they seem to think this is some sort of exoneration when in reality it’s an even worse look than being biased. Julian Sachez explained this in a thread:
Initial reaction: The IG report is indeed incredibly bad for the FBI, though not for the reasons Trump & his defenders assert. Only against the backdrop of their exaggerated claims could anyone call this any sort of “vindication” of the Bureau.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) December 10, 2019
Vindication of the Bureau.
Comey seemed to think so.
What the report demonstrates isn’t so much political bias as confirmation bias, and it ought to spur a broader audit of FISA applications.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) December 10, 2019
If they can’t get something like THIS right what happens on smaller cases?
The question we ought to be asking is: If there were this many significant errors in applications everyone understood to be incredibly sensitive, and they were *not* the function of some special vendetta against Trump, what would we find if we kicked the tires on a “normal” FISA?
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) December 10, 2019
Recommended
Scary stuff.
What I wrote in April holds up, I think: More disturbing than the initial application is the failure to assimilate new, contradictory information over the course of three renewals. https://t.co/HIm8Hegh78
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) December 10, 2019
From justsecurity.org:
If that’s true, it wouldn’t necessarily mean the FBI acted improperly in obtaining that initial order. Sometimes intelligence agencies follow leads based on information from sources they assess to be reliable, and that information turns out to be wrong. We know, for example, that only a very tiny fraction of the “assessments” the FBI opens each year blossom into full-blown investigations, but it’s impossible to know how many of those full-blown investigations similarly come up empty. FISA orders, unlike criminal wiretap warrants, are designed to gather intelligence, and not intended to lead to criminal prosecution in most cases. Even when they do, the government is typically reluctant to introduce FISA intercepts in court if they can make a case with other evidence. That means there’s no good way to evaluate the success of intelligence investigations by looking at prosecution statistics. Moreover, the public statistics on FISA orders, do not distinguish between new orders and extensions, which means there’s no good way to even approximately gauge how commonly FISA wiretaps are abandoned as dead ends.
In other words, FBI has some splainin’ to do so they should probably stop with the whole victory lap.
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