Republicans slam FBI for spying on 3.3 million Americans without any warrant

Republican House members are questioning the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after court-ordered information revealed that the bureau had collected information of over three million Americans without a warrant.

In a letter dated May 25, Ohio Representatives Jim Jordan and Mike Turner asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to explain why his agency had wiretapped and gathered personal information on over 3.3 million Americans without a warrant.

Limited authority to gather foreign intelligence information is granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, this power can grant an expanding circle of possible searches to the FBI and other intel agencies which can use the same power against American citizens who had any interaction with targeted foreigners.

Section 702 of the bill says: “The Attorney General (AG) and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) may jointly authorize the targeting of (i) non-U.S. persons (ii) who are reasonably believed to be outside of the United States (iii) to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

In the recently released Annual Statistical Transparency Report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), queries against U.S. citizens revealed a shocking 3,394,053 searches. Only 1,324,057 such queries were made in 2020, representing a 250 percent increase during President Joe Biden’s first year in office.

In their letter, Jordan and Turner demanded further transparency and explanations on the revelation that the FBI has often overstepped its legal authority to spy on American citizens.

The congressmen also requested a full accounting of all 3,394,053 citizens who showed up in FBI queries and “[the] number of preliminary or full investigations into any U.S. citizens the FBI has initiated as a result of information obtained through any of these U.S. person queries, and the nature of the predication for each such investigation.”

They also asked why 1.9 million Americans were queried over alleged Russian efforts to compromise U.S. critical infrastructure. They specifically requested the rationale for why these queries were found to be compliant with the FBI’s Section 702 querying procedures and the total number of U.S. citizens the FBI identified as victims of these compromises pursuant to these queries.

The duo further demanded a detailed statement about the FBI’s investigation, including the status of the investigation and any information uncovered about the identity of the Russian actors and their involvement with or connection to the Russian government, if any. (Related: Abolish the FBI or face an American Putin.)

FBI conducted unlawful surveillance on Trump

FBI has been operating illegally with warrantless spying and the Department of Justice (DOJ) has just recently acknowledged that the bureau did unlawful surveillance on former President Donald Trump back in 2016.

The document was released on May 8 by former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s counsel. The evidence was aimed to clear him on charges of having lied to the FBI.

The paper may have done little to absolve the campaign lawyer, but revealed a lot about the FBI operations. The logs revealed that FBI was actively spying on the Trump campaign and then-incoming Trump administration’s transition communications.

Said record was taken on a March 6, 2017 meeting between DOJ high-ranking officials and the FBI team, two days after Trump revealed via a tweet that former President Barack Obama wiretapped the Trump Tower.

FBI leadership already knew then that the Trump-Russia collusion claims were a hoax. But when Trump posted the tweet on March 4, 2017, the DOJ and FBI officials were alarmed. They even included FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and acting U.S. Attorney General Dana Boente in the meeting.

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Watch the video below discussing how Obama used FISA warrant to spy on Trump.

This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com.

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Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com 1

Republicans-Judiciary.House.gov 1

Republicans-Judiciary.House.gov 2

TheEpochTimes.com 2

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