Carter Page wiretap got OK by judge from Orlando
An Orlando-based federal judge was one of the four judges who approved the FBI’s requests to wiretap Carter Page, an excampaign adviser to President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration on Friday released more than 400 pages of documents relating to the FBI’s surveillance of Page, which showed that U.S. District Judge Anne C. Conway of Orlando was among the judges who approved the agency’s requests for wiretaps.
The records show Conway approved a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in April 2017, which identified Page — who had been a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — as “an agent of Russia.”
The documents were released after media outlets including The New York Times and USA Today sued to obtain them. They were heavily redacted, showing only basic details of the FBI’s request.
A University of Florida graduate, Conway has been a federal judge since 1991. She was nominated to the court by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the
U.S. Senate in November 1991.
Conway was named to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on a rotating basis in 2016. The court considers applications by the U.S. government, often the FBI, for approval of surveillance for “foreign intelligence purposes.”
The court was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Judges serve a maximum of seven years, in staggered terms. Conway was appointed to the court by U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, a President George W. Bush appointee.
The other three judges who approved the surveillance of Page were also appointed by Republican presidents, according to the Washington Post: two by George W. Bush and one by Ronald Reagan.
The surveillance of Page has been a politically contentious issue, with Republicans claiming that the FBI misled the court and abused its powers to spy on a member of the Trump campaign.
In a series of tweets Sunday, the president described the documents as proving “with little doubt” that the court had been misled, even as independent analysis generally described the documents as undermining allegations of impropriety.
Trump’s tweets also quoted conservative political commentator Andrew C. McCarthy as saying that the warrant applications were “so bad that they should be looking at the judges who signed off on this stuff, not just the people who gave it.”
An email to Conway’s chambers was not immediately returned.
Trump went on to refer to the FBI’s surveillance request as a “FISA scam which led to the rigged Mueller Witch Hunt!” Robert Mueller is the former FBI director currently serving as special counsel overseeing an investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election.