Sen. Rick Scott Lays into the FBI and Director Wray

​Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) recently fired off a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray holding the Bureau to account for its abuses of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on American citizens through improper, warrantless searches. The senator points to the “growing list of abuses that have come to light committed by the employees of your agency and the apparent lack of public accountability.”

Sen. Scott’s letter comes on the heels of a tidal wave of reports detailing rampant misbehavior in the FBI. To cite a recent example, PPSA reported on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion that revealed the FBI has spied on high-level U.S. officials, including a U.S. senator, a state senator, and a judge. (The FBI had previously been caught examining the communications of Rep. Darin LaHood, Republican from Illinois). Sen. Scott wrote: “The most recent revelations of frequent and repeated abuses … by the FBI raise concerns for the American public that there are no limits—legal or otherwise—on your investigative powers even when it comes to spying on American citizens.”
 
Sen. Scott’s letter was as substantive as it was critical, requesting the FBI to “explain the accountability for those rogue agents who conducted those illegal queries,” as well as a copy of the range of “‘possible’ disciplinary actions that could be implemented through ‘a new policy of escalating consequences.’”
 
Sen. Scott put it best when he concludes, “the American people and their elected representatives in Congress want to believe in their government and deserve nothing short of full transparency and accountability from the FBI.”
 
PPSA hopes the FBI will respond to this letter with more humility than the mixture of hubris and defensiveness that characterize the communications of Director Wray.