Fox News has now added federal FISA judges to its mission to destroy the credibility of any American institution not willing to toss aside the U.S. Constitution in order to submit to Dear Leader Donald Trump.
After working to undermine the FBI and with promises of attacks on the State Department and Hillary Clinton to come, Fox News has set its sites on FISA judges.
Tuesday, Fox & Friends’ cohost Ainsley Earhardt, knowing that her unofficial job title is Trump whisperer, took Republican Congressman Jim Jordan’s conspiracy theory about the FBI investigation’s anti-Trump bias a step further by implicating FISA judges, too. From Think Progress:
On Tuesday morning, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) joined Fox & Friends to push the conspiracy theory that the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign is rooted in the anti-Trump bias of Obama-era officials. But host Ainsley Earhardt took things a step further by suggesting the very FISA court that granted a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page was corrupted by political motives.
Referring to the 11 FISA court judges, Earhardt incorrectly claimed three of them were appointed by former President Bill Clinton (in fact two were), adding: “All it takes is one judge, right, to make the decision.”
Despite Earhardt’s despicable, Trumpian claim that a judge appointed to the bench by a Democrat would have a conflict of interest, the fact is that all 11 FISA judges were appointed to the FISA court by Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee.
What a coincidence that Fox host Martha MacCallum pushed a similar offensive that evening. In the opening segment of her interview with Rep. Trey Gowdy, MacCallum switched from going after the FBI’s FISA warrant application to surveil Page to going after the FISA judge(s) who granted it:
MACCALLUM: How did they get four rounds of approval for the warrant when it looks like they were coming up with not much at all on Carter Page?
[…]
It definitely does raise questions about the FISA court that they didn’t scrape beneath the surface and say, why have you included a news article as part of your substantiation here? Doesn’t it raise questions about how they’re doing their job?
Gowdy did want to go there.
GOWDY: I think most judges don’t rely on newspaper articles. I think they’re smart enough to discount that. I kind of blame the person who included it. If that’s all you’ve got it. I mean, that’s almost, by definition, hearsay as a newspaper article. Look, if I—I rarely miss a chance to blame judges, ‘cause I used to appear in front of them all the time. I don’t blame the judges. I blame the attorneys who are officers of the court. They’re not advocates just trying to get a result. You’re officers of the court. You have a responsibility to be forthright and honest and candid. And it’s not the judge’s fault if material information was not provided to him or her.
Watch Earhardt and MacCallum just happen to come up with the same conspiracy theory on the same day below, from the February 6, 2018 Fox & Friends and the February 6, 2018 The Story with Martha MacCallum.
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Crossposted at News Hounds.
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