The House voted Friday to move forward on reauthorizing a controversial spy tool on President Mike Johnson’s fourth attempt.
After a vote to advance the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Information Surveillance Act (FISA) failed earlier this week, Johnson reached a deal with former President Donald Trump and his allies to renew it for only two years instead of five.
That way, if Trump wins the election, Congress will be able to further reform FISA under his presidency.
The rule to begin debate on the FISA bill, the US Intelligence and Security Reform Act, passed by a vote of 218 to 208. The House will now begin debating and voting on six amendments.
The House voted to move forward on reauthorizing a controversial spy tool Friday in Speaker Mike Johnson’s fourth attempt.
Under a two-year reauthorization, if Trump wins the election, Congress can further reform FISA under his presidency.
The national security surveillance bill includes new barriers aimed at oversight and transparency, after a report found that intelligence agents had improperly questioned Americans 278,000 times under the law.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a May 2023 report detailing how the FBI improperly used Section 702 to ‘query’ (or search for) names of people suspected of being on Capitol grounds during 9/6. January. 2021 riots, Black Lives Matters protesters, crime victims and their families, and donors to a Congressional campaign.
The White House issued a statement in support of the FISA bill and in opposition to the amendment by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., to require a warrant before capturing conversations from those on U.S. soil who communicate with suspected terrorists.
Trump had deflated FISA’s approval chances earlier this week when he posted on Truth Social ahead of Wednesday’s vote: ‘KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME AND MANY OTHERS.’ THEY SPY ON MY CAMPAIGN!!! DJT.’
Another part of the law not subject to reauthorization, Title 1, was used to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 when he was suspected of having communications with the Russians. Trump reauthorized FISA in 2018.
Section 702 specifically allows the U.S. government to monitor foreign nationals with suspected terrorist ties who are not located on U.S. soil, even if the party on the other end of such communications is a U.S. citizen in the United States.
It is scheduled to expire on April 19, after which “the United States will go blind,” Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner warned reporters.
Without Section 702, intelligence agents would not be able to obtain a complete picture of the conversations of suspected terrorists abroad communicating with people on American soil.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, lashed out at the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and its allies who want the FBI to have to obtain a court order to resume those talks, which critics say would bog down the process of fighting terrorism.
‘Let’s be clear. His position is aligned (and co-sponsored) with that of the progressive group: Jerry Nadler, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal; The list goes on and on. “It is the far-left socialists who want this same policy,” he stated.
‘What progressives want to do is much more than just fix the program: they want to end it entirely. I’m not surprised that Rashida Tlaib wants to make it easier for terrorists to kill Americans, but I am VERY surprised that many Republicans agree with her.’
Crenshaw compared it to a wiretap in a criminal investigation. Police do not need to obtain a warrant to investigate the conversations of suspects and the people they speak to. He noted that intelligence agents need to trace potential terrorists’ conversations with those in the United States in the early stages, potentially before a judge approves a “probable cause” warrant.
‘This requirement – although perhaps well-intentioned – would actually destroy our ability to detect domestic terrorist attacks (or drug trafficking or espionage), because it prevents our investigators from moving beyond step 1 of the investigation process, which is simply connecting the dots with data that we already have legally.’
Biggs, who sponsored the warrant requirement, responded: “You have aligned yourself with the DC Cartel that insists on spying on Americans and violating the Bill of Rights.”
Crenshaw claimed the FBI ‘HATES’ the bill’s new reforms. ‘It seriously degrades your access to the FISA database. Imposes criminal sanctions for abusing it. It makes it clear that no one can be searched for any reason, but only in the case of investigations related to foreign intelligence, weapons of mass destruction or terrorism.
While many of the uses of Section 702 remain classified, intelligence officials leaked late last year that they had used the controversial tool to thwart arms sales to Iran.
The CIA and other intelligence agencies had used information gathered by monitoring the electronic communications of foreign weapons manufacturers and stopping several shipments of advanced weapons to Iran.
On Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a dire warning to members of Congress about what could happen if FISA expires. “It will greatly increase the risk of overlooking crucial information during a time of growing national security threats on multiple fronts,” Wray said.
‘If we are blind Looking at who our adversaries are, who they’re working with, I can tell you that that will definitely have implications for our ability to protect the American people, because I can assure you that none of our adversaries are tying their hands. So now is not the time to hang up the gloves.’
The ODNI report states that 13 people connected to January 6 were inappropriately questioned to determine if they had “foreign ties.”
Additionally, the database was searched for more than 130 individuals who were linked to social unrest and riots carried out by Black Lives Matter activists following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
The FISA search was conducted to obtain information about whether they were connected to any counterterrorism plots, which the Justice Department wrote in the report as “reasonable,” but the high level of redaction does not allow for a fuller explanation.
There was also a “batch investigation” of more than 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, who were not named.
The FBI analyst who conducted the search said the campaign was a possible target of foreign influence.
However, the Justice Department said only “eight identifiers” were used in the search in total that “had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities to meet the query standard.”
Additionally, FBI FISA searches were conducted on crime victims, including “individuals listed in police homicide reports, including victims, next of kin, witnesses, and suspects.”
The Justice Department said these inquiries were inappropriate because there was “no reasonable basis” to expect that individuals would be linked to foreign intelligence through such searches.