Koch Bros Propaganda Promotes Justin Amash as Crusader ‘Against FISA Surveillance Abuse’
Shane Trejo
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While Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) is alienating his constituents and conservatives throughout Michigan who do not want to surrender their state to the Democrats in 2020, he is making some friends in high places.
The globalist Koch Brothers, who loathe Trump because he opposes their status quo policies of free trade and open borders, have their astroturfed Reason Magazine publication gushing over Amash’s history of battling against FISA court abuse.
There’s only one problem: Amash cheers on the worst abuse committed by the FISA courts in history – the illegal spying operation targeting Donald Trump and the subsequent Mueller special counsel investigation.
Reason associate editor Scott Shackford argued in his pro-Amash article that the Congressman’s failed legislative endeavors and lip service against the surveillance state are laudable.
“Bizarrely, some who are upset that Amash won’t support Trump are now attempting to attack him for being weak on surveillance issues,” Shackford wrote.
“This is absolutely baffling for anybody who knows that Amash has regularly tried to use his position as a lawmaker to scale back the government’s powers in both the PATRIOT Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments (FISA) to secretly snoop on American citizens,” he added.
Shackford brought up an instance at Amash’s town hall from earlier this week where the Congressman refused to directly answer a question from a pro-Trump constituent. She even claimed Amash laughed at her FISA concerns off camera.
“Why did you say nothing about the FISA abuses? If you care about the constitution so much, why didn’t you say anything about the yearlong violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of Trump and his entire transition team?” she asked.
“The FISA only relates to one part of the investigation,” Amash said, weaseling out of answering her question. “The rest of that investigation does not relate to that FISA.”
The Koch Bros-funded propagandist responded with a similar level of arrogance as Amash to the legitimate concerns of the Trump supporter.
“For somebody who claims to have been an Amash supporter up until these past two years, the lady at the town hall seemed awfully unfamiliar with his record,” Shackford wrote.
“It’s brazen how much Trump and those in his orbit care only about the Fourth Amendment and FISA to the extent that it can be used to protect Trump. None of these people, including Trump, give one single damn about restraining government surveillance,” Shackford concluded.
Amash may have offered many failed efforts in Congress to restrict government surveillance powers, but he actively cheers on the worst FISA abuse in history because of his opposition to President Trump.
A recent report in The Hill from investigative journalist John Solomon details an e-mail chain between former FBI Director James Comey, attorneys for the DOJ’s national security division, and FBI investigators working on the Russia probe that he calls “the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).”
The email exchanges allegedly show that the FBI understood the unreliable nature of the Christopher Steele dossier that was ultimately used to justify the deep state spying operation of Trump and then the Mueller probe before they made the case to the FISA court.
The FBI also reportedly knew that Steele, a former British spy, was in touch with reporters, harbored a grudge against President Trump, and had dug up the dirt at the behest of Fusion GPS – a firm tasked with doing opposition research on behalf of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton.
The FISA court was told by the FBI on four separate occasions that it “did not believe” that Steele tipped off Yahoo News about former Trump aide Carter Page’s alleged involvement in Russian collusion.
London court records later showed that was a lie, and Steele had in fact had contact with Yahoo News. The Steele Dossier and Yahoo News article were used as the justification for a FISA warrant for the feds to spy on the Trump campaign. Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get the relevant documents on the record.
“The FBI does not believe that Source #1 [Steele] directly provided this information to the identified news organization that published the September 23rd News Article,” the FBI states in a document. “Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI.”
This is just one of an incredible litany of FISA court and deep state abuses that Amash is happy to sweep under the rug because of his desperation to remove President Trump from office.
“Nobody has fought more against [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] abuse than me,” Amash said during his town hall.
While Amash may file anti-surveillance bills that he knows have no chance at ever passing in Congress, he actively cheers on the biggest FISA abuse scandal in history. This has made him a pariah among conservatives, but a hero of the leftist resistance and the Washington D.C. think-tank class.
Certain oligarchs who have funded the Republican Party establishment for decades are quite thrilled with Amash’s turn. The Koch brothers, who lobby for social media censorship, illegal immigration, and trade policies to destroy opportunity for U.S. workers, are clearly happy with Amash participating in the deep state witch hunt against President Trump.
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