"It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, and something that at the very least should have been disclosed to the FISC for their consideration for the warrant.
"
Actually no, legally, it has no impact or relevance.
The same way that whether a prosecutor likes or hates you doesn't matter to a warrant application.
It matters whether they have probable cause or not.
If they have probable cause, there is no malicious prosecution claim you can make.
Judge is supposed to look at the evidence, see if there is evidence of probable cause, and if so, approve it.
Otherwise, deny it.
Either that happened or it didn't.
Either all the relevant (and again, bias is not relevant) evidence supporting the warrant were provided or it wasn't.
The judge is the neutral adjudicator, not the investigator.
There is a lot of caselaw on this because bias of informants is always challenged (and pretty much always loses):
"Legally, if there is even an apparent conflict of interest, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse."
This is not correct AFAIK.
There is no legal statute or local court rules i'm aware of saying any such thing.
If you know one, please cite it.
(I used to be very heavily into this area when i interned at the Center for Democracy and Technology many years ago).
The FBI is only driven by the attorney general's guidelines, which are not overseen or approved by anyone else, and carry no force of law.
In this case, the judges were not shown the evidence. This is the weakness of courts - they can only rule on what is presented to them.
Again, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse if there is even the appearance of a conflict of interest. That's the legal standard. So, obviously biased FBI officials should not have been involved in preparing or approving the FISA warrant application.
"In this case, the judges were not shown the evidence. "
What evidence, precisely, do you think? As all the caselaw i cited says, bias is not evidence. The standard for probable cause is not very high.
Fun fact: it's also not legally actionable, even if evidence was hidden, if it's likely the warrant would have been approved anyway.
"Again, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse if there is even the appearance of a conflict of interest. That's the legal standard. "
Please cite actual caselaw instead of bare assertions.
I'm aware of no caselaw that says this, and i'm a lawyer with a significant amount of knowledge about FISA warrants and FBI guidelines/rules.
The only regulations here are internal to the FBI (though published in the CFR i believe), which are not "a legal standard" and are 100% irrelevant to what they need to do in front of a court.
(also note that there is a separate set of FBI guidelines that are classified that cover certain types of investigations. I do not remember if they cover the investigation type that occurred here)
The same way that whether a prosecutor likes or hates you doesn't matter to a warrant application.
It matters whether they have probable cause or not.
If they have probable cause, there is no malicious prosecution claim you can make.
Judge is supposed to look at the evidence, see if there is evidence of probable cause, and if so, approve it. Otherwise, deny it.
Either that happened or it didn't. Either all the relevant (and again, bias is not relevant) evidence supporting the warrant were provided or it wasn't.
The judge is the neutral adjudicator, not the investigator.
There is a lot of caselaw on this because bias of informants is always challenged (and pretty much always loses):
http://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/31/the-dubious-legal-claim-...
"Legally, if there is even an apparent conflict of interest, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse."
This is not correct AFAIK. There is no legal statute or local court rules i'm aware of saying any such thing. If you know one, please cite it. (I used to be very heavily into this area when i interned at the Center for Democracy and Technology many years ago).
The FBI is only driven by the attorney general's guidelines, which are not overseen or approved by anyone else, and carry no force of law.