Tipsheet

This FBI Tweet Just Got Nuked by Community Notes

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  March 30, 2024 1:35 PM

Last week, the FBI probably didn’t expect to be fact-checked this brutally on social media. The agency’s director, Christopher Wray, testified before Congress that the agency had always complied with the rules and regulations concerning the process required in obtaining FISA spy warrants against American citizens. We know that’s a total lie. The bureau doctored evidence to secure FISA warrants against former Trump campaign officials, Carter Page being the top target.

The bureau tweeted a clip of Wray detailing how the law enforcement and domestic intelligence agency complies with Section 702. If it weren’t for a community note on Twitter, this would’ve been taken as gospel. As it so happens, the fact check annotation included a story from The Hill, which reported that the FBI had violated the Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens over 250,000 times with illegal FISA spy warrants: 

The FBI repeatedly misused a surveillance tool in searching for foreign intelligence to use in cases pertaining to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and 2020 racial justice protests, according to an April 2022 court order publicly released Friday. 

The order, which was released by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is significantly redacted but reveals thousands of violations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to collect communications between certain targeted foreign individuals outside the U.S. 

The court has legal oversight of the U.S. government’s espionage activities. 

FBI officials said the violations came before corrective measures the agency took starting in summer 2021 and continuing into last year. 

But the release could create obstacles as the FBI seeks to have its warrantless surveillance program receive reauthorization from Congress before it expires at the end of the year. It could also expose the agency to heightened scrutiny amid recent GOP attacks on its activities. 

Do we need reminding that the FBI is staffed with bad people, the worst in committing acts of government overreach? Agents visit people’s homes because they posted anti-Biden material on social media. Illegal FISA warrants are atrocious, but now they’re targeting Americans exercising free speech rights. Why? Are they compiling an enemies list? Would you be shocked? Not me.