Orlando Judge Involved in Surveillance of Former Trump Advisor

On Friday, the Trump Administration released a 400-page document detailing the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump campaign advisor, Carter Page. Among the four judges who signed off on this surveillance was Orlando’s own U.S. District Judge Anne C. Conway.

Conway approved the warrant under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows intelligence agencies to monitoring the communications and activities of individuals and organizations suspected of either espionage or terrorism. The warrant was signed in April of 2017 and identified Page, the then foreign policy advisor to Trump’s presidential campaign, as a possible Russian agent.

Conway has been a federal judge for the last 27 years and was named to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in 2016. FISC was created as part of FISA in 1978 to evaluate applications by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to carry out surveillance operations against suspected foreign agents.

President Trump and other Republicans were quick to jump on the news shortly after the document’s release, claiming that the FBI misled the court in an effort to impede Trump’s presidential campaign. The 400-page document was released after legal action by the New York Times and USA today but was heavily redacted, limiting the details of the FBI’s request of surveillance.