FISA Court Selecting Surveillance State Advocate, David Kris, Shouldn’t Be a Surprise

CTH:

This is a little weedy, but it’s important….

In the second half of Devin Nunes interview with Maria Bartiromo today he was asked his thoughts about the FISA Court selecting David Kris as an FBI surveillance and compliance monitor.  The issue is quite important because the FBI FISA reforms and promises are essentially meaningless without some form of structural review process.

However, the new 2020 FISC Presiding Judge James Boasberg selecting David Kris has been noted by several people as a rather weak effort on behalf of the court.

As an outcome of our former FISA-702 reviews CTH has an entirely different reason for questioning the selection of Kris; there’s much more substantive reasons to be alarmed about it; but first here’s the general consensus opposition:

WASHINGTON – The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris — a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and written extensively in support of the FBI’s surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare — to oversee the FBI’s implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice inspector general report last year.

[…]  “Of all the people in the swamp … this is the guy that you come up with?” Nunes asked. “The guy that was accusing me of federal crimes? The guy that was defending the dirty cops at the FBI? … The court must be trying to abolish itself. There is long-term damage.”

President Trump then referenced Nunes’ interview with Bartiromo on Twitter on Sunday afternoon, calling Kris “highly controversial” and slamming the FISC’s decision. (read more)

There’s an aspect to the history of David Kris and Judge Boasberg that explains this selection…. It doesn’t justify it, but explains it.   CTH first learned of Kris when researching who the government was using as Amici Curiae for FISC Reviews (FISC-R appeals).

You see, there’s a process when the FISA court denies the position of the government, for the feds to appeal the FISC decision.  In essence if the FISA court defines activity by the government as a violation of the fourth amendment, the government sends representatives to argue “process issues” on behalf of the surveillance state.  David Kris has been one of those Amici Curiae; and specifically Kris has worked to ameliorate Judge Boasberg before.

Judge Boasberg became the presiding FISC judge on January 1st of this year, replacing FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer.

In April 2017 the DNI released a FISA report written by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collery that showed massive abuse, via unauthorized searches of the NSA database, in the period of November 2015 through May 2016. Judge Collyer’s report specifically identified search query increases tied to the 2016 presidential primary.  Two years of research identified this process as the DOJ/FBI and IC using the NSA database to query information related to political candidates, specifically Donald Trump.

When Judge Boasberg was given the similar assignment, to review the intelligence community use of the NSA database, essentially a FISA-702 compliance audit (2017 through March 2018), he wrote his findings in a report in October 2018.

Within Judge Boasberg’s review of the 2017 activity he outlined an identical set of FISA violations from within the FBI units and “contractors” as initially outlined by Judge Collyer a year earlier.  Judge Boasberg wrote his opinion in October 2018 and that opinion was declassified last October 8th, 2019). Continued