The number of people targeted by federal warrants for suspected spying on behalf of a foreign agency plummeted in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, national intelligence officials said Friday. WATCHDOG SAYS FBI VIOLATIONS WITH FISA WARRANTS WENT BEYOND RUSSIA PROBE"The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic likely influenced target behavior, which in turn may have impacted some of the numbers reported for that year," the ODNI report said. But the global pandemic does not explain the even greater decline in the number of people targeted by federal authorities between 2018 and 2019. The decline in FISA warrants first coincided with fierce political scrutiny the FBI faced following the revelation that Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, was wiretapped through the use of a FISA warrant. The ODNI report showed that even as cases have decreased over the last two years, there has been an increase in the percentage of FISA warrants targeting American citizens, with more than 22 percent of the cases in 2021 targeting "U.S.

Source: Fox News May 01, 2021 00:11 UTC