Shut it down. But punish those who have been abusing it. I suspect the Trump case is not the first one; they just made the mistake of going after a president.
Meanwhile, Carter Page is suing the DNC over the dossier. Perkins Coie hasn’t gotten enough attention. I hope that’s about to change.
If we shut it down we revert to what we had during Nixon, LBJ, Hoover (who had the dirt on JFK), Truman and FDR. Not any better IMO and likely worse, now that we know our intelligence organizations are populated with unaccountable deep state types. Maybe if we had a counsel for the defense, who could monitor the progress of a warrant and *actively* seek it’s revocation and could also *advocate* for de-classification and publishing in a register past warrants once de-classified it would make far more sense. Judges and these public defenders to be rotated frequently. Staffing of course, more deep state. We have the worst of all worlds here, secrecy and politics.
Hoover had no problems keeping files on Presidents….
A secret court is a contradiction-in-terms, and a mockery of our legal system.
Government secrecy *in general* has been used and abused in so many ways, I’d rather burn it all down and start over. (To our NSA overlords: I’ll abide by the law until it changes, but the law is an ass.)
Secret courts are a cardinal sign of tyranny. I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the time when Church gave the CIA a high colonic.
If the FISA court doesn’t scream bloody murder about being misled by those seeking Trump’s removal and seek their prosecution for perjury, then the court should be abolished.
Since that ain’t gonna happen, then perhaps the FISA court needs to add an attorney that argues to quash an application for a FISA warrant, some kind of advocate for the defendant
I am no longer convinced that the benefits of having a secret court (there are benefits) outweigh the damage that can be done by all-too-fallible humans.
You would need people of high, strong virtue in a court like that and I don’t think we have them available these days.
When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they put in checks and balances because they knew people will abuse power if given the opportunity. A secret court like FISA is supposed to use judges as the check on law enforcement and intelligence personnel. If law enforcement and intelligence personnel were all noble servants of the public, the there would be no abuse. However, we’ve seen that there are law enforcement and intelligence personnel who will abuse their positions for personal and political gain. Further, the record shows they were nothing more than a rubber stamp. The secret nature of the court makes maintaining checks and balances almost impossible.