Don’t Expect Much Out of FISA Reform, Look Who Was Picked to Oversee The Process

The Horowitz report on FISA abuse referred “the entire chain of command” to the FBI and DOJ for “how to assess and address their performance failures” during their investigation, of which there were many. Horowitz himself testified in December that “The activities we found here don’t vindicate anyone who touched this.”

But if you think the 17 “significant errors and omissions” identified by the report will be addressed to your satisfaction, get ready to be disappointed.

On Friday, former DOJ official David Kris was selected to oversee the FBI’s reforms of its surveillance procedures identified by the Horowitz report. You may not be familiar with that name, but Mr. Kris was an enthusiastic defender of the FBI’s surveillance of Carter Page. According to the Daily Caller, Kris was also “an outspoken critic of Rep. Devin Nunes and other congressional Republicans who accused the FBI of misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in applications to wiretap Page.”

“It’s hard to imagine a worse person the FISC could have chosen outside Comey, McCabe, or Schiff,” Devin Nunes, told the Daily Caller.

“The choice is shocking and inexplicable,” he added.

Carter Page also spoke with the Daily Caller, and was disappointed by the selection.

“If there were any hope for the system fixing this FISA mess, it extinguished with David Kris’ appointment,” Page said. “Nobody trying to fix the rampant abuse and coverup plaguing the entire FISA process would have picked Kris.”

Carter Page described Kris as a “longtime FISA apologist.”

According to Page, the only reason to appoint Kris to that position is that “you don’t want the system fixed. You just want it to look like you do.”

Kris served in the Justice Department from 2009 to 2011 and has had quite a bit to say about the Trump-Russia probe. Not only did he write that had Republicans “falsely accused” the FBI of misleading the FISA courts, but he also backed the FBI’s claim that there was sufficient reason to suspect Page was a Russian agent. His writings on the matter reflected those of Democrats in Congress and the liberal media.

Based on Kris’s writings, he sounds more like an anti-Trump pundit than a neutral expert.

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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis