***To read the full blog, please check out the cross-post on NewsBusters***
Appearing to be torn between declaring President Donald Trump a liar and wanting to peg the administration as Russian conspirators, NBC’s Sunday Today decided to mischaracterize the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act Court or FISA Court. “We're throwing around the term FISA court, FISA warrant. Let’s explain a little bit Jeremy, what that means,” explained anchor Willie Geist, “The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, 1978, as you suggested in response to Nixonian domestic spying.”
The reason the FISA Court was in discussion Sunday morning, was because on Saturday Trump dubiously claimed that the former administration ordered the phones in Trump Tower to be wiretapped. As NBC national security analyst Jeremy Bash (who was the chief of staff for the CIA and DOD under Obama) told Geist, the president does not have the power to order such taps directly.
According to Bash, if federal investigators had enough evidence against someone they can go to the FISA court to get a wiretap warrant. “The Justice Department and the FBI go to them with a filing that says we suspect someone in the U.S. is a foreign power,” Bash said, “A foreign power say working for the Russians, for example.” Bash assumed what it could say about the Trump campaign:
Well, that would tell me that a federal judge found probable cause, meaning enough evidence to believe that either there was criminal activity or that there was foreign espionage activity in Trump Tower. Specifically, Willie, I think what it means is that a federal judge found that people in Trump's organization were colluding with the Russians.