The Hill: Explained: How the secret spy court really works
The allegations of surveillance abuse raised by House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) hinge on a 1978 law that governs surveillance for the purposes of foreign intelligence.
That surveillance must be conducted with a warrant when the collection takes place in the United States. Those warrants are granted by a secretive court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is known colloquially as “the FISC.”
Nunes claims in a memo that the Department of Justice hoodwinked the FISC by failing to disclose that some of the information it used to apply for a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was drawn from opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The warrant application included a footnote saying the provenance of the information was political opposition research, but did not specify Clinton or the DNC.
Here’s how the court works.
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WNU Editor: 98% of applications are approved. Did someone say rubber-stamp?
