Tipsheet

'These Aren't Typos': Ted Cruz Grills IG Horowitz Over FISA Errors

A "stunned" and "angry" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked DOJ IG Michael Horowitz at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to try and explain the 17 errors he found in the FBI's four FISA applications to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

"This pattern of facts makes me angry," Cruz said.

"These aren't typos," he noted. A number of the uncovered errors found are "deeply troubling" and a "grotesque abuse of power."

The senator highlighted a few of the more egregious ones. Such as how the FBI failed to tell the FISA court that the Christopher Steele dossier about Trump and Russia they used to try and justify their surveillance of Page had been funded by the DNC.

The FBI relied "entirely" on the uncorroborated dossier. Or, as Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham preferred to call it, "a piece of garbage." 

There was also the instance when a low-level FBI lawyer altered an email to try and make it seem as though Page was not a CIA source, and the email was then presented before the FISA court. The witness didn't deny it.

These were just a few of the misleading tactics the FBI employed to gain their FISA warrant. 

And yet, Horowitz and his team found no political bias on the part of the FBI. Cruz had to "disagree" with that judgment.

"This wasn't Jason Bourne," Cruz said in closing. "This was Beavis and Butt-Head."

Incredibly, some of those bad actors at the agency, as admitted by Horowitz today, are still at the FBI.