Lewis: It’s Time to Abolish the FISA Court

April 2, 2020

WOODBURY, Minn. — U.S. Senate candidate Jason Lewis released the following statement calling for the FISA Court to be abolished in light of the new Justice Department report showing systemic abuse of power.

“A new report released by Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirms what we have all feared for quite some time: the FISA Court’s abuse of power is systemic. In a review of 29 different cases pulled from 8 different FBI field offices, not a single one was without error. Four cases were lacking the critical ‘Woods File’ and there was on average 20 issues per case reviewed. This is frightening.

This comes on the heels of the damning December DOJ report which revealed at least 17 ‘errors’ in the Carter Page FISA applications, including omissions of exculpatory information over the use of a wholly fictional ‘Russian dossier,’ and the specter of FISA judges rubber stamping false affidavits while being misled on the operational status of Mr. Page. The FISA Court has since all but admitted the abuse of power, but it was too little too late.

The latest findings show the Page case wasn’t a one-off lapse in judgement – this is clearly a systemic problem. This should alarm all Americans.

This is why I went against party leadership and voted against the FISA reauthorization while in Congress. At the time, I pushed for much-needed reforms to FISA, but the reforms didn’t command the support of the majority of the House, despite the much-publicized civil liberties abuses such as warrantless wiretapping. As I said then, I could not in good conscience support the threats to privacy posed by a blanket extension of FISA surveillance without meaningful reforms. Now I think we are beyond the point of reforms. Simply put, it’s time to stand up for civil liberties and abolish the secret court.”

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