President Donald Trump, while quoting Fox News' senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, tweeted that the FBI's reliance on the "Clinton Campaign's Fake & Unverified Dossier" was an illegal way to get Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants on former campaign aide Carter Page.
"'FBI top lawyer confirms “unusual steps,'" Trump said on Twitter. "'They relied on the Clinton Campaign’s Fake & Unverified “Dossier,'" which is illegal. "'That has corrupted them. That has enabled them to gather evidence by UNCONSTITUTIONAL MEANS, and that’s what they did to the President.'"
Napolitano, while on Fox News' "Fox and Friends," criticized how the FBI obtains warrants after reports that a former top FBI attorney James Baker told House investigators last year that he had been briefed on a the warrant, and that it relied on a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
"The standard [for FISA] is, has this person ever spoken to a foreign person, to a foreigner," Napolitano said. "So I could talk to my tailor in Midtown Manhattan and that would justify the FISA warrant on me."
Napolitano said the FISA procedure means there is a "low standard" needed to get a search warrant, and as a result, when the FBI can't get a "more difficult" warrant, they get the "easy one."
As there were some people in the FBI who were against Trump and had an agenda to make him "stumble" or keep him from becoming elected, that means danger for Americans as well, said the judge.
"We keep getting snippets of this evidence," Napolitano said. "If they can do this to the president of the United States, they can do it to anybody."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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