President Trump called attention Saturday to a new revelation about the federal probe of his 2016 campaign, noting that a secret federal court held no hearings before granting surveillance warrants.
“Report: There were no FISA[1] hearings held over Spy documents,” Mr. Trump tweeted.
The Justice Department acknowledged in a court filing Friday night that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a part-time former Trump campaign adviser who was the subject of four FISA[2] warrants. The court filing was in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.
Mr. Page was suspected of being a Russian agent, an accusation he denies in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Mr. Trump quoted Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in his tweets: “‘It is astonishing that the FISA[3] courts couldn’t hold hearings on Spy Warrants targeting Donald Trump. It isn’t about Carter Page, it’s about the Trump Campaign. You’ve got corruption at the DOJ & FBI. The leadership of the DOJ & FBI are completely out to lunch in terms of exposing and holding those accountable who are responsible for that corruption.”
Mr. Fitton said in a statement that the FISA[4] court “rubber-stamped the Carter Page spy warrants and held not one hearing on these extraordinary requests to spy on the Trump team.”...
“Perhaps the court can now hold hearings on how justice was corrupted by material omissions that Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, a conflicted Bruce Ohr, a compromised Christopher Steele, and anti-Trumper Peter Strzok [a former FBI agent] were all behind the ‘intelligence’ used to persuade the courts to approve the FISA[5] warrants that targeted the Trump team,” Mr. Fitton said.