Lux Lucet

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. speaks with reporters outside the White House. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Among the biggest stories in the press so far this year has been the dust up over the FISA memo.

The memo is the work of the House Intelligence Committee and its Chairman Devin Nunes. For several weeks, Americans were treated to the suspense, not just concerning what was in this mysterious memo, but also whether it would be released to the public at all.

After two weeks of wrangling, the go-ahead to make the memo public finally was given by President Trump on Friday, February 2.

The memo, as it turned out, showed that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were less than forthcoming when they presented the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) with evidence to convince the court to authorize electronic surveillance of one of then-candidate Trump’s volunteer advisors, Carter Page.

The evidence supplied by the DOJ and the FBI to get the FISA warrant – the application was presented to the FISA court on October 21, 2016, just weeks before the presidential election – was a dossier put together by Christopher Steele, a former British spy. The dossier contained allegations about Carter page and Donald Trump. The ones concerning Trump were of a particularly salacious nature.

As the memo notes, the problem with the DOJ’s and FBI’s reliance on the dossier is that they did not reveal to the FISA court that the dossier was, in part, paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and was thus of a partisan nature.

Further, the FBI and DOJ supplied little in the way of corroboration of the claims in the dossier to the FISA court, relying principally on the supposed credibility of Christopher Steele due to his past work for the FBI.

In truth, Steele was not nearly as credible as the FBI wanted the FISA court to believe. According to the memo, “Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations – an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn.

Steele made an even earlier unauthorized release of information to the press. For a September 23, 2016 article by Michael Isikoff in Yahoo News about alleged ties between Carter Page and the Kremlin “is,” as the memo notes, “derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News.”

Steele was hardly unbiased either, admitting to Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.”

What we have, then, is a situation where the FISA Court approved electronic surveillance of a Trump campaign advisor based upon a dossier compiled by a biased an unreliable investigator, which was in part paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, a fact know to the DOJ and the FIB when they made application for the FISA warrant but which was not disclosed by them to the FISA Court.

In other words, the FBI and the DOJ lied to the FISA Court, in order to go after Donald Trump’s campaign advisors, and ultimately Trump himself. Apparently the motive for doing so was that certain people in high ranking positions didn’t like Trump or his politics and wanted to find a way to prevent him from becoming president, or, barring that, of getting him removed from office.

The Real FISA Memo Scandal

While the details related above certainly are serious and suggest that individuals at the highest levels of government actively conspired against candidate, and later, president elect Trump, they are not what I consider to be the real FISA memo scandal.

For there’s a large issue at play here, one that I’m afraid is all too often overlooked: The issue of secrecy in government.

In the weeks before the memo was released, the media was filled with earnest pleas from various high-ranking folks not to release it to the public. Current FBI Director Christopher Wray threatened to quit his job if the memo was released.

In a January 27, 2018 article, the Washington Post darkly warned that Trump’s desire to have the memo released put his at odds with his own Department of Justice, which called the act of releasing the memo “extraordinarily reckless.”

Commenting on this article, Adam Schiff, House Intelligence Committee Minority Leader, whined in a tweet that, “It comes as no surprise that @POTUS would place his own interest ahead of the country. But it is tragic that so many Republican Members of Congress would chose to help him do so.”

After the release of the memo, Senator John McCain complained “The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.” Apparently, McCain is under the impression that American’s have no right to know what their government up to, and anyone who wants to know obviously is nothing but a servant of Vladimir Putin.

To all this I say nonsense. American’s have a right, I would argue, even a responsibility, to know what their representatives are doing in their name. But have you ever noticed that over time, your ability to know what the government is up to seems to be less and less, while at the same time the government’s ability to pry into your personal affairs becomes greater and greater?

Patrick Henry

This is not a new problem. Patrick Henry recognized it during the debates over adopting the Constitution. Said Henry,

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. The most iniquitous plots may be carried on against their liberty and happiness…[T]o cover with the veil of secrecy the common routine of business, is an abomination in the eyes of every intelligent man, and every friend to his country.

And yet the very thing that Henry eloquently opposed is the very thing that FBI Director Wray, the Department of Justice, Adam Schiff and John McCain wished to do: conceal from the people the transactions of their rulers.

Here we see the distinction of the Christian view of government as expressed by Patrick Henry and the far more common, yet tyrannical view of government as expressed by Schiff, McCain and others.

The Scriptural basis for these two views go back to a conversation Jesus had with his disciples. They were arguing about who among them was the greatest, and Jesus responded, saying,

The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves. For who is greater, he who sits at the table, or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as the One who serves. (Luke 22:25-27).

First, Jesus talks about the rulers at that time, “the kings of the Gentiles.” Far from being humble men, these kings were quite impressed with themselves. But second, that was not to be the case with those called by Christ’s name. Those who sought to lead were to do so by serving. Third, Jesus holds himself forth as the example par excellence as one who leads by service to others.

This passage is the basis of the Christian idea that government is a servant of the people. By seeking to withhold information about their activities, the FBI, and the DOJ, not to mention their defenders in congress and in the media, are guilty of doing the very thing Jesus commanded them not to do, they are guilty of “lording it over” their people in the fashion of the rulers of the ancient world.

Patrick Henry, on the other hand, writing in the more Christian 18th century, well understood the Biblical idea that rulers are servants, not masters, of their people. Contrary to the nonsense put out by the ACLU and other humanistic, atheistic organizations, Christianity is not the foe of civil liberty, but its best friend and surest stay.

If Americans in the 21st century are to have any hope of recovering a limited government of , by, and for the people, in place of our current big government tyranny of, by and for elite special interests, that recovery must begin and end with a rediscovery of the Scriptures and the doctrine of Justification by Belief Alone.