Er, no, it's most decidedly not. And putting aside for a moment the shocking depravity of that utterance, it's a fundamental part of the point I've been trying to make since my initial foray into this particular Matryoshkal **** show.
FISA warrants are issued in one year increments. The bar for a warrant to be granted, as I've said, is high (on paper) - but it's also important to note that the burden of probable cause in a FISA court is extremely low (e.g. instead of "is" a foreign agent, FISA accepts "may be" scenarios). We know the initial warrant was granted by the court in 2014, for surveillance from ~2014-2015. We don't know if surveillance was granted again sometime during 2015, but we do know that it was granted again sometime in 2016. That's at least two (possibly three) FISA wiretap warrant renewals. Let's ignore the Fifth Amendment issue here and deal with the known facts; 1) the government believes Paul Manafort is an agent of a foreign government 2) the government is building a case against Manafort 3) the government, despite stating to a FISA court that they have enough probable cause to believe Manafort is a criminal foreign agent, can't make a prosecutable case against Manafort despite years of eavesdropping material.
So, we can assume that either the court was given new, clear and compelling evidence about Manafort's activities each time it reviewed the 'renewal' warrant application, or that it wasn't, given that we don't know with any real certainty how FISA treats warrant renewals vs. original applications. I shouldn't neglect to mention the fact that FISA courts have denied somewhere in the neighborhood of ~0.3% of warrant cases brought before them.
It's not that I find the (original) warrant specious in and of itself, but rather that I find the jurisprudential approach of the renewing court(s) extremely suspect. That suspect behavior easily morphs into negligence when you consider things like incidental collection and the likelihood that Manafort was either working for, or heavily involved in the Trump campaign at the time he was wiretapped the second (or third) time.
And I don't know what comes after negligence when we earnestly consider something like civil liberties. Although, given that Manafort is your Russo-American collusion great white whale, I can understand why you'd be happy to temporarily sweep your convictions under a rug.
