Note: The NYT has been forced to acknowledge the very misleading implications in its article.

If current reports are true, the FISA warrants already represent a major scandal. Since Trump dropped his twitter bomb there’s been overreach by both sides and a bit of muddying the waters. The New York Times reporting indicated that specific individuals were subject to wiretaps, but they’ve since altered their title claimed these individuals were caught up in a wiretap of Russians officials. I should note that the NYT article specifically mentions three individuals, which matches up with earlier reporting, however the scope of this warrant remains in dispute. HeatSt also claims there was a June FISA warrant that named Trump in some context and targeted members of his team, while the Guardian claims it was intended to ‘monitor four members of the Trump team.’ Though the warrant requests were turned down by the FISA court, they constitute a major violation of political norms.

The FBI is said to have been investigating a Trump server and some of his campaign officials, but the investigation turned up nothing criminal. In June 2016 the DOJ sought a FISA warrant to further their investigation, a potentially huge escalation from a criminal probe. It is one thing to have the Department of Justice oversee a criminal probe, and it is a completely separate matter to involve the DOD and invoke national security. FISA warrants are only allowed against ‘foreign agents,’ but these can and do target US citizens.

Let’s look at this in context. The government was well aware that the DNC and possibly others were successfully hacked at this time, and were facing a potentially very public intelligence failure. Under this cloud, the Obama administration then attempted to use the US military to assist in their investigation of US citizens for possibly colluding with Russia. Perhaps the administration had some incredibly damaging evidence that has not been leaked, but obviously not enough for a FISA warrant. The FISA court denied the request in June and again in July when the DOJ attempted to narrow the scope. When considering the permissiveness of this court (since it’s establishment in 1978 it has only denied 12 out of ~35,000 requests) their two failures to obtain warrants indicates a major overreach. This alone is damning. The Obama administration attempted to claim that US citizens involved with running the presidential campaign of the opposing political party were foreign agents. Further, it did so with an obviously weak justification which only highlights the brazenness of the action. That Obama’s staff had a partisan and institutional motivation to find someone to blame for the hack must also be taken into account. Whether politically motivated or earnest in their attempt, the Obama administration used the national security apparatus to target Trump’s associates. To write this off as standard behavior is not only ignorant, but normalizes a very dangerous precedent.