DOJ watchdog finds additional problems with FBI's surveillance warrant process

A Justice Department watchdog has identified additional errors in the FBI's surveillance warrant application process after reviewing more than two dozen Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications, according to a new publicly released memo. Justice Department (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz informed FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday that his office did "not have confidence" that the FBI was properly following the Woods Procedures, an FBI policy that requires officials to provide supporting documentation to back up factual assertions made in FISA applications. "As a result of our audit work to date and as described below, we do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy," Horowitz wrote in a Management Advisory Memorandum to Wray. "Specifically, the Woods Procedures mandate compiling supporting documentation for each fact in the FISA application. Adherence to the Woods Procedures should result in such documentation as a means toward achievement of the FBI’s policy that FISA applications be 'scrupulously accurate.'" Horowitz discovered these additional problems after visiting eight FBI field offices and reviewing a selected sample of 29 FISA applications that were tied to both counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations between October 2014 and September 2019. Horowitz said he chose broaden his review of FISA applications following the release of a sprawling report in December that found "fundamental and serious errors in the agents’ conduct" as it related to the Woods Procedures...MORE

 See also IG Horowitz Found ‘Apparent Errors or Inadequately Supported Facts’ in Every Single FBI FISA Application He Reviewed