The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Director’s Report on FISA court activity for calendar year 2021 records seven amicus appointments of six individuals. The six names are Amy Jeffress, Laura Donohue, Marc Zwillinger, James Orenstein, Mary McCord, and Ben Johnson. The report says those appointments were made by the FISA courts. It does not print which judge signed McCord’s designation.
Georgetown Law’s faculty page states that McCord is a statutorily designated amicus curiae for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. That is her institution’s description of a present role. Amicus is advice. It is not a judgeship.
The District of Columbia court bio is plain: Boasberg served on FISC beginning in May 2014 and was the Court’s Presiding Judge from January 2020 to May 2021. The Federal Judicial Center directory records the same FISC years and the same presiding window. Contemporaneous reporting dated McCord’s appointment about April 15, 2021 — inside that window: Washington Examiner (Jerry Dunleavy, April 29, 2021); Daily Caller News Foundation (April 28, 2021); Epoch Times reprint of the DCNF piece (April 29, 2021). Those articles are reporting. They are not a signed designation order.
The companion file sources her November 1, 2017, HPSCI interview: she discussed a Carter Page application and said a career Acting AAG lacked statutory signing authority. Review is not a signature. A Conservative Treehouse headline that the presiding judge “hired” her is commentary. This page does not upgrade that headline into a finding, and it does not invent a handshake.