Judge Napolitano’s description of the institutional culture at the FBI undermines Senator Lindsey Graham’s theory of the case about the abuses uncovered by IG Michael Horowitz

Lindsey Graham teed off as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee the other day with an unhinged, apoplectic tirade against the individuals who conducted the FBI’s Operation Crossfire Hurricane (OCH). 1/16

Justice Department IG Horowitz Defends Report, Highlights FISA ProblemsJustice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his report on the origins of the FBI’s 2016…https://tinyurl.com/rca7olh

In this tirade, Graham was clear only about two things.

On the one hand, he made it clear that he hates people who hate Trump. (Count me in as one of the Trump haters.) 2/16

Secondly, he also made the case (clearly) that the FBI needs a thorough auditing to make sure that the seventeen “serious errors and omissions” that Horowitz uncovered in his investigation of the Carter Page FISA applications do not occur again. (Here I agree completely.) 3/16

What was perfectly unclear in Graham’s long, rambling, opening statement was everything in between the two. There are no logical or evidentiary connections between them to be found anywhere in the entire speech. 4/16

Graham mentioned in passing once that other theories of the case about what happened were possible, but he never spent one second considering them seriously or trying to discount or dispose of them. 5/16

Instead, Graham’s tirade amounted to sheer demagoguery.

His method was to shout outrage into his mic at all the people who conducted OCH, and to castigate them as runaway Trump haters. 6/16

I guess Graham hoped that his long, sustained venting and fuming was all that was necessary to establish the connections he needed to make his case. 7/16

But, as I’ve pointed out in previous threads, Graham’s theory of the case is not only inadequate: it is actually rather absurd. 8/16

More heat than light came from today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Horowitz ReportAt the end of the day, the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to get any resolution on the key point that Lindsey Graham and all the other Republicans on the panel zeroed in on, which is 1/41 how to…https://tinyurl.com/w3728yy

As I have also argued, the issues raised by the Horowitz Report in connection with the FBI’s handling of the Carter Page FISA applications can be resolved only by considering how the bureau has handled other FISA applications, 9/16

because if examinations of other investigations uncover similar issues, we would have to conclude that the problem is one of systemic, institutional failures, rather than an infection in the specific case of OCH of nefarious actors with unconstrained political agendas. 10/16

This article by Judge Napolitano shows that this is almost certainly the right explanation. 11/16

Judge Andrew Napolitano: FISA — utilized to OK FBI surveillance of 2016 Trump campaign — is unconstitutionalThe Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is repugnant to the Constitution and to the concept of an independent judiciary.https://tinyurl.com/sgwes5r

(@Judgenap is a civil libertarian who deplores and opposes FISA. I am not in that camp, and have defended the Carter Page FISA warrants and also the Steele dossier in previous tweets,

though I do agree that the abuses Horowitz uncovered are serious.) 12/16

Napolitano’s article is worth reading because, if he is right, abuse of the FISA process is widespread in the FBI; 13/16

and if the kinds of abuses that Horowitz uncovered in his investigation of Crossfire Hurricane are not peculiar to that investigation, it is unlikely that an unbounded political animus is what explains them. 14/16

Compare Napolitano’s description of the current institutional culture of the FBI (and of the way it likely handles all FISA applications) with Graham’s rant at the beginning of the hearing the other day and see if I’m not right. 15/16

See also: 16/16

Nobody on the Senate Judiciary Committee today seemed to understand the use of raw human intelligence in counterintelligenceThe Democrats did pretty well today in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, but they could have done better. 1/30 The main failing was that the Democrats did not challenge the constant invective…https://tinyurl.com/wjp2seu