It turns out that the FISA court warrant applications for secret surveillance of Carter Page, and through him, the Trump campaign, may have violated the elaborate internal FBI procedural safeguards put in place by – hold your breath! – Robert Mueller. I will respect her work by limiting the excerpts here and sending you to her column in The Hill laying out her journalistic digging. It is the essential read of the day.

There are strict rules requiring that each and every fact presented in an FBI request to electronically spy on a U.S. citizen be extreme-vetted for accuracy — and presented to the court only if verified. (snip)

Presentation of any such unverified material to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to justify a wiretap would appear to violate crucial procedural rules, called “Woods Procedures,” designed to protect U.S. citizens.

Yet Comey allegedly signed three of the FISA applications on behalf of the FBI. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly signed one and former Attorney General Sally Yates, then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein each reportedly signed one or more. (snip)

Woods Procedures were named for Michael Woods, the FBI official who drafted the rules as head of the Office of General Counsel’s National Security Law Unit. They were instituted in April 2001 to “ensure accuracy with regard to … the facts supporting probable cause” after recurring instances, presumably inadvertent, in which the FBI had presented inaccurate information to the FISA court. 

Best all, the Woods Procedures were implemented by none other than Robert Mueller, as head of the FBI.

This would seem to indicate that Mueller should be intimately aware of the corrupt origins of his own investigation, the “fruit of the poisonous tree,” as the law calls it.

Sharyl Attkisson is a national treasure!