Who Is The FISA Court Judge Who Did Obama's Bidding?

Judge Rudolph Contreras

Contreras was appointed to serve as United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 2012 by Obama. He also serves as a judge on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or FISA court appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts in the midst of the highly contentious 2016 presidential election. Contreras is also responsible for issuing the FISA Warrant to wiretap former Trump Campaign Foreign Policy Adviser Carter Page.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton Campaign paid Christopher Steele $160,000 to dig up information on Trump team members including Carter Page. Steele also provided this information to the FBI.

The FBI and DOJ asked the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) for permission to surveil Page, using the Steele Dossier as evidence. They did not disclose that Steele was paid by political opponents of their target to compile the information presented to the court. Based on probable cause from the information amassed by a Democratic operative, the court granted their surveillance request.

What exactly is the FISA Court many people are asking? The FISA Court is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Such requests are made most often by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Application for a surveillance warrant or FISA warrant is made before an individual judge of the court. Denial of a FISA warrant request is very rare. From 1978 to 2011 the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with on 12 denials over the entire 33 year period. That is a rejection rate of .0312%. It is also interesting to note that EVERY SINGLE judge on the FISA Court currently was appointed by the Obama administration.

It is interesting that Contreras was sought out for this warrant in particular as he also oversaw the case against former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.  He then abruptly and with no explanation was recused from the case on December 7, 2017, just prior to Flynn’s guilty pleaentered on December 8.  It is interesting to note the language used when the announcement was made – the words “was recused” were used, NOT that he “recused himself.” The terms are not interchangeable and mean very different things. The terms are not necessarily interchangeable and the “was recused” phrasing suggests that Contreras was told to recuse himself rather than the judge voluntarily stepping away from the case based on his own concern for a conflict of interest.

The charges were brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in relation to the Trump-Russia investigation and many believe they were trumped up or even false charges.

Robert Parry pointed out with regard to the Flynn case – “What is arguably most disturbing about this case is that then-National Security Adviser Flynn was pushed into a perjury trap by Obama administration holdovers at the Justice Department who concocted an unorthodox legal rationale for subjecting Flynn to an FBI interrogation four days after he took office, testing Flynns recollection of the conversations while the FBI agents had transcripts of the calls intercepted by the National Security Agency.

In other words, the Justice Department wasn’t seeking information about what Flynn said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak the intelligence agencies already had that information. Instead, Flynn was being quizzed on his precise recollection of the conversations and nailed for lying when his recollections deviated from the transcripts.

Then, just four days into the Trump presidency, an Obama holdover, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates, primed the Flynn perjury trap by coming up with a novel legal theory that Flynn although the national security adviser-designate at the time of his late December phone calls with Kislyak was violating the 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from interfering with U.S. foreign policy.”

The Logan Act, however, was never intended to apply to incoming officials in the transition period – and in the past 218 years, has resulted in no successful prosecution. 

Yates then performed mental gymnastics based on her Logan Act theory to assert that Flynn’s deviation from the transcript of the intercepts meant he might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.” 

Many speculate that Contreras may have had an attack of conscience, refusing to convict Flynn on the basis of the trumped-up charges listed above. The case was reassigned to Bill Clinton appointee, Judge Emmet Sullivan, after Contreras’ untimely recusal. According to Joe DiGenova, a former US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Contreras was, in fact, removed from the case.

Additionally, a recent declassified ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) detailed almost 10 pages listing hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization rules.  Every single one of which is believed to have occurred while on former FBI director James Comey’s watch. The utter and complete flagrant disregard is simply astounding.

The behavior in question that the FBI admitted to before a FISA judge ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight the bureau promised was in place years ago.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.