EDITORIAL: FBI representations ‘unsupported’ and ‘contradicted’

Former FBI Director James Comey was reduced to squirming in his chair over the weekend when confronted on “Fox News Sunday” with the uncomfortable facts contained in an inspector general’s report on the agency’s Russia investigation.

Mr. Comey had long maintained that the FBI’s use of a secret surveillance court was beyond reproach, telling MSNBC last year that GOP criticisms of the process were misguided and “political.” Democrats in Washington insisted the same, in particular that the infamous Steele dossier was but a minor factor in the FBI’s warrant application.

But last week, the IG report revealed that agency officials had essentially lied to the FISA court in order to obtain permission to wiretap a Trump campaign aide. The report also found that the dubious Steele dossier “played a central and essential role” in convincing the court to issue the warrants.

“I was overconfident as director in our procedures,” Mr. Comey admitted to host Chris Wallace on Sunday. What happened was “not acceptable.”

Yet to hear most Democrats tell it, the IG report was some sort of vindication of the FBI probe. This “move along, nothing to see here” attitude reflects a desire to downplay any information that might inconvenience their three-year crusade to overturn the 2016 election. But this issue isn’t going away, no matter how much Nancy Pelosi &Friends hope impeachment pushes it out of the news cycle.

On Tuesday, the top judge on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court took the extraordinary step of publicly rebuking the FBI and gave the Justice Department three weeks to implement reforms to protect against future missteps.

“The frequency with which representations made by the FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession,” Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote, “and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”

Translation: Officials at the nation’s top law enforcement agency included false and incomplete information in applications seeking permission to spy on the Trump campaign, while also omitting potentially exculpatory facts that undermined the basis for the probe.

The obvious questions: Who will be held accountable at the FBI? Will Judge Collyer have anything further to say about the agency’s manipulation of the court? Will the secret tribunal, which routinely rubber-stamps law enforcement requests, now be more diligent in vetting such applications?

Democrats used to be suspicious of state police powers. But now they’re willing to downplay the FBI’s dangerous and willful deviation from constitutional standards simply because it might hinder their efforts to remove the president. That’s a real scandal.