Thread by @GeorgeCroner

Absolutely on target. Most of the "requirements" in Barr's redundant memos already are part of the post-Horowitz FISA improvements undertaken by the FBI and monitored by the FISC. Misreps to FISC, for example, already must be disclosed under FISC Rules of Procedure. /1

https://twitter.com/jgeltzer/status/1300859420566577152

FISA (§ 104) already requires applications to be approved by the AG upon a finding of compliance with FISA statute, and requires that FISA applications include a certification that foreign intelligence information sought cannot be acquired by normal investigative techniques. /2

Memo reduces maximum surveillance period for U.S. persons to 60 days (FISA permits up to 90 days), but FISC always has had authority to limit the period. 30-day reports are similar to Title III mandate, but FISC always had authority to require such reports as well. /3

Only "new" mandate requires that before FISA surveillance is sought against “(1) a federal elected official or staff members of the elected official, (2) a declared candidate for federal elected office or staff members or advisors of such candidate’s campaign /4

(including any person who is “an informal advisor to the campaign”) - then the FBI Director must first consider a “defensive briefing” (a term undefined in the memo with no specific direction as to the location of the appropriate definition) /5

of the target or document in writing why such a “defensive briefing” is not appropriate. Now, set aside, for the moment, the definitional issues relating to the utterly opaque terms “staff member” or “informal advisor” in terms of who is now eligible for consideration of a /6

“defensive briefing.” Definitional issues aside, tipping off the target is no way to conduct a counterintelligence investigation - and the distinction between criminal and counterintelligence investigations always has been lost in Barr’s campaign to validate Trump’s claim /7

that he was “spied on.” This is particularly curious since this same AG is on record as believing that the existing scheme found in FISA is “too restrictive and posed significant problems for counterterrorism efforts” due to the regrettable belief that “national security /8

issues could be dealt with within the framework of our criminal justice system or pursuant to carefully-hedged, detailed procedures derived from that system.” Trying to shoehorn counterintelligence considerations into the the “carefully-hedged” procedures of the criminal /9

justice system is equally bad judgment - unless your principal purpose is supplying an excuse to decry the “spying” on the Trump campaign. So, in the end, the goal of Barr's poorly drafted memos is simply to furnish him with another platform from /10

which to proclaim that “what happened to the Trump presidential campaign and his subsequent Administration after the President was duly elected by the American people must never happen again.”

It's always comforting to see the AG use a superfluous set of new "standards" /11

regarding one of the nation's most important foreign intelligence tools as agitprop in a partisan stunt - especially considering that these new "rules" arguably would not apply to surveilling someone like Carter Page since Page was neither a staff member nor a formal or /12

informal advisor to the Trump campaign when the first FISA surveillance of him was approved in October 2016. Good work, we can all feel safer now. /13