FISA ruling on spy warrants could void ALL Mueller convictions
WND Staff
January 24, 2020
Robert Mueller
The ruling by the nation's top spy court that at least two of the four warrants obtained by the Obama administration to surveil onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page were "not valid" states that the FBI must "sequester all" relevant information and evidence.
The notation prompted speculation that convictions obtained in Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation that relied on material obtained from the Page surveillance could be voided.
Evidence obtained by authorities through illegal means is not admissible in court cases.
The spy warrants were based largely on the infamous "Steele dossier" of unsubstantiated Russian propaganda funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Former British spy Christopher Steele alleged Page was part of a "well-developed conspiracy of cooperation" between the Trump campaign and Russian government to influence the 2016 election.
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U.S. Attorney John Durham is now conducting a criminal investigation into the origins of the Obama counter-intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.
The Jan. 7 FISA ruling by Judge James Boasberg cited the Justice Department inspector general's finding of "material misstatements and omissions in the applications filed by the government in the above-captioned dockets."
"The court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the court's authorizations in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679 were not valid," the ruling stated.
The ruling said the "validity" of two other authorizations was not yet determined.
Democrats point to the convictions obtained through the Mueller investigation as proof of President Trump's culpability, even though the cases were unrelated to the central and now-debunked claim of Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
Axios notedthe convictions include former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, Richard Pineda, Dutch attorney Alex van der Zwaan, former Trump campaign deputy chairman Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
The charges included bank and tax fraud, lying to investigators and conspiracy.
Twitter user Undercover Huber, who has been following the FISA-abuse story, said the "sequestration" is very significant.
"It suggests that FBI/DOJ is firewalling off all of the data and information collected via the Page FISAs, likely because they realize that if illegal, all the info collected is 'fruit of the poisonous tree.'"
He wrote that someone should ask Mueller and his team whether "any of their cases relied on information gathered or derived from the Page FISAs, either directly from Page or two hops away from him."
The Federalist pointed outthe FISA court order noted it is a federal crime for any federal official to intentionally disclose or use "information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having any reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized" by law.
The following sentence of Boasberg's ruling is redacted, the Federalist noted, raising questions about whether the government used any information obtained through the now-invalid Page surveillance warrants in other cases.