Appearing to be torn between declaring President Donald Trump a liar and wanting to peg the administration as Russian conspirators, NBC’s Sunday Today decided to mischaracterize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “We're throwing around the term FISA court, FISA warrant. Let’s explain a little bit Jeremy, what that means,” explained anchor Willie Geist, “The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, 1978, as you suggested in response to Nixonian domestic spying.”

The reason the FISA Court was in discussion Sunday morning, was because on Saturday Trump dubiously claimed that the former administration ordered the phones in Trump Tower to be wiretapped. As NBC national security analyst Jeremy Bash (who was the chief of staff for the CIA and DOD under Obama) told Geist, the president does not have the power to order such taps directly.

According to Bash, if federal investigators had enough evidence against someone they can go to the FISA court to get a wiretap warrant. “The Justice Department and the FBI go to them with a filing that says we suspect someone in the U.S. is a foreign power,” Bash said, “A foreign power say working for the Russians, for example.” Bash assumed what it could say about the Trump campaign:

Well, that would tell me that a federal judge found probable cause, meaning enough evidence to believe that either there was criminal activity or that there was foreign espionage activity in Trump Tower. Specifically, Willie, I think what it means is that a federal judge found that people in Trump's organization were colluding with the Russians.

But Bash’s account of how the FISA Court operates and what their alleged approval of a wiretap means for the Trump Team was designed to paint a very negative narrative.

Bash asserts that “And those federal judges are hard graders and they turn the Justice Department around all the time and say, go back and do more homework. Bring me more evidence.” But that claim is highly misleading. According to The Guardian, “The secretive US foreign intelligence surveillance court did not deny a single government request in 2015 for electronic surveillance orders granted for foreign intelligence purposes, continuing a longstanding trend, a Justice Department document showed.”

On top of that, CNN legal analyst Danny Cevallos admitted that the secrecy of the court has been an issue for the public. “That's been a criticism of the FISA court that it operates almost entirely in secret and on a probable cause standard that is much less than what the regular courts have to deal with,” he stated CNN’s New Day Sunday. Basically, the standard for probable cause is so low in the FISA Court that almost any request is permitted by the court. It’s why the court has the reputation of just being a rubber stamp.

Again, these facts were never brought up in NBC’s reporting. Given the rubber stamp nature of the FISA court, it’s a possibility that in the process of the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the election they requested and were granted such a warrant regardless of probable cause. Which would mean Bash’s declaration of, “What it means is that a federal judge found that people in Trump's organization were colluding with the Russians,” is over the line.

Transcript below:

<<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>>