Tag Archives: FISA

Reggie Barnett Walton is a traitor.

Reggie Barnett Walton is a federal judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He is the former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) was established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

According to the Federal Judicial Center website, FISA “authorized the Chief Justice of the United States to designate seven federal district court judges to review applications for warrants related to national security investigations.” In 2001 the Patriot Act expanded the court to eleven. At least three of the judges must live within 20 miles of the District of Columbia. Further, the judges have terms of up to seven years, and review warrants.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center also notes that the FISC can “hear applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance” and “physical searches” for the “purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information” on foreign citizens in the U.S.

In May 2007, Chief Justice John Roberts tapped Judge Reggie B. Walton for the FISC, and made him presiding judge of this secret court. For the following seven years until his term ended in 2014, Judge Reggie B. Walton has greatly expanded the ability of the federal government to unlawfully spy on U.S. citizens domestically and overseas.

At an FISC hearing, the government is not required to show evidence of criminal activity or of probable cause justifying a search warrant for foreign targets. Rather, the feds only need show the target of the spying is a foreign power or its agent. In the case of an American citizen or resident alien, the Attorney general would certify that the target may be involved in the commission of the crime. And because everything is in secret, the target of the surveillance does not have the opportunity to appear before the hearing or even know it is being targeted.

The court, which approves government spying programs, approved the surveillance operations revealed by Edward Snowden, the former contractor for the National Security Agency. Snowden leaked the NSA programs that have collected massive amounts of data on Americans’ telephone calls and internet activity. The American Civil Liberties Union has asked the court to release its opinions on the phone surveillance program, a request President Obama wants FISC to reject.

Since that time it was learned the NSA even snooped on the European Union.

As for the traitor Judge Reggie B. Walton, due to the secrecy of the FISC, we cannot possibly know the full extent of his work on the court. But at the very least, it is known Reggie Barnett Walton is a traitor for taking on the unconstitutional role of Big Brother.

On October 30, 2014, federal judge Reggie B. Walton of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia entered an order dismissing a lawsuit filed by True the Vote, a Houston, Texas-based non-profit organization focused on “voters’ rights and election integrity” against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The order alleged that the IRS had improperly delayed granting their application for 501(c)(3) status and targeted them as a conservative organization.

One of the main issues argued in True the Vote’s lawsuit was that the IRS had improperly delayed granting their 501(c)(3) application, which is the section of the IRS code conferring tax-exempt status on qualifying non-profit organizations. True the Vote filed their application during the summer of 2010, and pursuant to the IRS’s own rules, the agency had a duty to send a response within 270 days. That deadline was not met. Instead, years went by, while True the Vote, founder Catherine Engelbrecht, and King Street Patriots, another tea party group with which Engelbrecht was affiliated, all found themselves subject to invasive requests for records and information from not only the IRS, but also the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In May 2013, news broke that the IRS admitted targeting conservative organizations applying for 501(c)(3) status with “special scrutiny,” and True the Vote filed their lawsuit later that month. They were getting questions about a lot of things other than tax returns. Describing the “strange questions” asked by IRS agents that seemed far beyond the scope of what they had expected, including number of Facebook “likes,” membership lists, and content of internal organizational communications.

The IRS finally granted True the Vote’s 501(c)(3) status in September 2013. Almost a year later, in July 2014, while waiting for the judge to issue a ruling on the parties’ initial briefs, more news broke: that emails from Lois Lerner’s computer had been “lost” in a computer crash. True the Vote filed a new motion seeking to begin discovery, arguing that the news meant that there was a real risk that relevant evidence could be lost or destroyed. The Judge Reggie B. Walton denied that motion and then took no further substantive action until his ruling in October 2014, which dismissed the entire case.

Judge Walton’s opinion stated that because the IRS had finally granted True the Vote their 501(c)(3) status, the case “no longer warranted the Court’s attention and further use of its resources,” and deemed True the Vote’s lawsuit to now be moot. However, True the Vote had argued specific costs that the IRS’ delay had caused them, including fees for attorneys and CPAs, as well as fundraising losses. A number of other non-profit organizations and other donors had either pledged or donated money to True the Vote with the understanding that the group would have official 501(c)(3) status soon. Some of these groups even had requirements in their organizational documents that they could only give money to other approved 501(c)(3) organizations. The IRS’ years-long delay acted as a “functional denial of our application” and True the Vote was forced to return some donations, and other pledges were revoked. The total costs to True the Vote caused by the IRS’ delay to be nearly $90,000.

In short, Judge Reggie B. Walton acknowledges in his opinion that the IRS did in fact target True the Vote for their perceived political beliefs, but then he holds that neither the agency nor the individual IRS agents or officers are responsible for this unconstitutional conduct.

The notion that the IRS can target Americans for years because of their political beliefs is reprehensible. Every patriotic American should be concerned when courts condone abusive and arbitrary administration in any government agency. This would include the court run by this treasonous judge named, Reggie Barnett Walton.