According to the newly declassified court document, in June 2022 an FBI analyst conducted four searches of information collected under the warrantless surveillance program “using the last names of a U.S. Senator and a state senator.” In both cases, the analyst had information showing that the two lawmakers were being targeted by a foreign intelligence service.

A senior FBI official stressed that “none of these individuals were surveilled” and the FBI “did not collect any information on them” in response to the search. The analyst ran an unapproved search “against our databases to retrieve any information that was already lawfully collected,” the official added.

But the database searches nonetheless violated the FBI’s policy on multiple fronts, according to the court document.

[Coincidentally or not, the statutory grant to collect and analyze this kind of data is up for renewal soon. Perhaps this is a good time to discuss restructuring counter-intelligence to get the FBI out of the mission. — Ed]