A guest column from Rep. Adam Schiff.

In the run-up to the release of a deliberately misleading memo, some Republicans hyped the underlying scandal as "worse than Watergate." When it was published, however, it delivered none of the salacious evidence of systemic abuse that it promised—only a cherry-picking of information from a single FISA court application. The memo’s release provided none of the vindication the President sought or would claim, but it was hugely consequential nonetheless, in how it undermined the system of checks and balances designed to insulate the FBI from White House meddling established in the wake of Watergate.

The years after the Watergate scandal saw multiple Congressional investigations into misuses of law enforcement and intelligence powers. Under the leadership of Director J. Edgar Hoover, who served in that role for nearly 40 years, the FBI targeted domestic political groups it deemed to be “subversive” for unconstitutional surveillance and covert actions. The targets of these actions included socialist groups, anti-war protesters, and civil rights groups and leaders, among them Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jimmy Carter campaigned for President in 1976 promising a scandal-weary nation that he would wall off the Department of Justice and FBI from political influence and direction. As President, Carter did just that, for the first time putting in place formal rules to govern interactions between the Department of Justice and the White House. Perhaps more important, he established an expectation that the extraordinary powers of the Department of Justice and the FBI would not be wielded as a cudgel against the political opponents of the president. As new checks and balances were added in the Executive Branch, new oversight mechanisms were established in Congress and the courts as well.

For the first time, the intelligence committees in the House and Senate allowed a select group of democratically elected representatives to oversee the most sensitive work of the intelligence agencies, and to be read into the most closely-guarded national security secrets and programs. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was established in 1978 to supervise and provide an additional check on highly-classified counterintelligence surveillance processes. The norms and institutions protecting the Department of Justice from political interference in the years since have been tested, but never before as they are under President Donald Trump.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a16560965/schiff-trump-fbi-instrument/