The application seeking a surveillance warrant against a former Trump campaign aide was "appalling," National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy said Monday, adding that he doesn't know how a judge could have approved it.
"I look at this application and it's appalling," McCarthy told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "I think if I gave this warrant when I was a prosecutor to a judge down the street in Manhattan, I would have got my head cut off."
On Saturday, Judicial Watch released a set of four FISA applications it had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, heavily redacted by the Department of Justice, used an unverified dossier compiled by former spy Christopher Steele to obtain the warrants against Carter Page, and did not disclose the connection between the dossier and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
"I think that a FISA warrant was issued on the basis of unverified uncorroborated information," McCarthy said.
"One of the big problems people are going to have with this is that there is a lot of things in national security whereby the government has to be able to look you in the eye and say, 'trust us,'" said McCarthy.
"People are going to wonder if they did that in this case, how rampant is the problem? How much do they push the envelope because they know no one is ever going to check their work?"
The FBI, said McCarthy, used the dossier to say the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia.
"What they say in the application is that he [Page] was, basically, the linchpin for coordinating the efforts that Russia was making to interfere with the election with the Trump campaign," said McCarthy. "It's probably important to point out to people that under our American FISA law, to get a warrant on an American citizen, you have to show not only that he is engaged in clandestined activities, but they probably violate the law."
Page has never been charged with a crime, McCarthy added, which underscores that he was investigated based on an non-collaborated dossier.
Further, because the application and hearing were made in private, the DOJ and the court owed Page, as an American citizen, a "higher level of due process, because it's the only due process the person is ever going to get."
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans, including Reps. Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy, are calling for the unredacted version of the FISA applications, and McCarthy said they'll likely see more of the information, and they should.
"A lot of what's in these FISA applications, look, they should be classified because very top secret information," said McCarthy. "If there is information in there about what we know about Russia, and the threat it is to the United States, that stuff should be kept classified.
"The people in Congress who have clearance to review this should review it. How much of it becomes public, I don't know."
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.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.