Violating the U.S. Constitution

"This is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue. [The Obama administration use of the National Security Agency for surveillance and its failure to admit it demonstrated] an institutional 'lack of candor'."
"The full scope of non-compliant querying practices had not been previously disclosed to the Court."
"According to media reports, during the last year of the prior administration, law enforcement and intelligence officials sought, and eventually obtained, authorization from this Court to eavesdrop on then or former Trump campaign officials; continued monitoring the individuals even when no evidence of wrong-doing was said to have been found; then relaxed the NSA rules to allow evidence to be shared widely within the government."
"[The administration] rushed to collect and then distribute intelligence information collected to numerous federal agencies, increasing the likelihood that certain information, including the identities and conversations of private U.S. citizens, might be leaked to the media."
U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) report

"This is the sort of thing that would make Richard Nixon blush."
"President Obama ... has abused and misused the National Security Agency in a way that no one ever even pondered before."
Chris Farrell, director of investigations, Judicial Watch

"[The information showed] everyone from the chief justice of the Supreme Court, to other justices, to hundreds of judges, to Donald Trump, to me -- anybody who was anybody -- was subject to this government surveillance by the intelligence agencies, the NSA, and CIA."
"Comey sat on this for over two years, he buried this investigation of perhaps the biggest scandal in American history."
Larry Klayman, founder, Freedom Watch

One in every twenty of the NSA's searches through upstream Internet data targeted Americans, reports by John Solomon and Sara Carter for Circa state. They had been in receipt of internal, classified reports on the issue. Data intercepted by the NSA as it is transmitted through data routes between computer networks describes 'upstream' collection.  These searches, according to the FISA report, violate American surveillance laws, a situation well known to the principals involved.

Raw information received from the surveillance documents, according to the FISA report was disseminated by the FBI. This fact connects with accusations that intelligence agencies had illegally spied on members of Donald Trump's election team, as he has claimed to general disbelief. The FISA report adds that certain contractors "had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems [going] well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's request."

The Obama administration "has not explained" how raw information it provided to FBI contractors might not have been a violation of the law. The report states that the FISA Court is "nonetheless concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard" for the rules. It was noted that the Obama administration went on to mobilize other government branches for its political motives; the Internal Revenue Service to suppress political rivals and to politicize the Justice Department and other government bodies.

A former contractor for the NSA and CIA, Dennis Montgomery, took with him 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information when he left his post. That data exposed illegal surveillance of judges, politicians and virtually anyone holding power in the United States. Once he was granted immunity, Montgomery surrendered the data to the FBI over two years earlier, helped by Larry Klayman.