The House voted down a bill reauthorizing the federal government’s foreign surveillance capabilities Wednesday after former President Donald Trump demanded lawmakers “KILL” it — and despite support for the proposal from House Speaker Mike Johnson, a majority of Republicans and family members of Americans killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The House voted 228-193 against advancing the rule to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) before it expires on April 19.
Nineteen Republicans and 209 Democrats voted down the rule, with many voicing concerns over its failure to constrain intelligence agencies from surveilling Americans’ personal data without a warrant and some knocking its inclusion in a rule vote with other conservative priorities.
“We’re enacting sweeping changes — 50 reforms, 56 to be exact — to the program … that will stop the abuse of politicized FBI queries and prevent another Russia hoax debacle, among many other important reforms,” Johnson (R-La.) told reporters ahead of the vote earlier Wednesday.
“No more Steele dossier, no more of the intelligence community relying on fake news reports to order a FISA order, no more collusion,” he added. “It’s critical we address these abuses because we don’t want to be able to lose section 702 of FISA. It’s a critically important piece of our intelligence and law enforcement in this country.”
“Because it allows us to continue killing Hamas terrorists, you have to stop the terrorists before they kill Americans,” he went on. “It allows us to track shipments of the illicit chemicals used to make fentanyl. It allows us to protect US warships from attacks by Houthi rebels. It allows us to stop China from stealing American intellectual property and it prevents ransomware attacks against American companies.”
The 9/11 Families United group also wrote a letter to Johnson Tuesday that “strongly urge[d]” him to reauthorize the intelligence capability, warning that letting it sunset “would be detrimental to American national security and would put Americans at risk of new terrorist attacks,” according to a copy of their letter obtained by The Post.
“We understand that the intelligence community uses these provisions on a constant basis to protect Americans from murderous attacks like those on September 11, as well as other new threats that have emerged over the past 22 years,” they added.
Congressional privacy hawks pushed for an amendment Tuesday to the FISA reform bill, H.R. 7888, which would require the FBI and other intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant to spy on Americans’ private communications.
That amendment to end warrantless queries of US data passed the House Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan bill last December, with 35 members voting in support and only two opposing it.
In a needed boost to their efforts, Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday morning and roared: “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”
The House moved forward with the procedural vote Wednesday on the FISA reform bill, with final passage tentatively slated for Thursday.
However, the measure was included in a rule vote with three other bills also seen as non-starters for Democrats, Punchbowl News reported, even as some like Progressive Caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) supported the Judiciary Committee’s FISA reforms.
Now, the Senate may have to take up its own FISA reauthorization without changes to current law — or else the Section 702 authorities will expire.
“Congress has an obligation to the American people to ensure our 4th Amendment rights are protected,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), who tangled with Johnson earlier this week over the bill, told The Post.
“We can fix Section 702 of FISA by adding warrant requirements and closing the data broker loophole,” he also said, referring to credit card payments, internet search histories and online messages collected by websites, cell phone service providers and social media companies. “The American people are demanding the end of warrantless surveillance.”
“We can fix Section 702 of FISA by adding warrant requirements and closing the data broker loophole,” he also said, referring to credit card payments, internet search histories and online messages collected by websites, cell phone service providers and social media companies. “The American people are demanding the end of warrantless surveillance.”
“The constitutional liberties of Americans have to come first,” House Freedom Caucus chairman Bob Good (R-Va.) told reporters after Wednesday’s vote.
“You can’t surveil US citizens without a warrant,” he added. “The prevention of the federal government being able to buy data they would otherwise need to have a warrant for should have been in the base text of the bill.”
“The Speaker of the House put his finger on the scale against the amendment,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) who voted the bill out of committee Tuesday, but tanked it on the floor due to its enhancement of federal spying powers.
“They literally had to exempt senior homes and coffee shops because they know it’s expanding [the federal government’s surveillance capabilities],” added Roy, who along with Good called for Johnson to put the Judiciary Committee bill on the floor for a vote immediately.
“The speaker can choose a different path,” Roy said, while qualifying that “a clean extension” of FISA authorities was “arguably preferable to an expansion.”
Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) also threatened Johnson ahead of the vote, saying his handling of the “FISA process” and “funding Ukraine” would “tell our entire conference how to handle the motion to vacate” that she lodged against him last month — but has yet to call up for a vote
“I did not give him a redline,” Greene told reporters in a Capitol Hill gaggle following a private meeting with Johnson in the speaker’s office.
Asked to respond to Trump’s opposition to the bill before the vote, Johnson had said: “I look forward to talking with him about it.”
“He’s not wrong, of course, they abused FISA,” he added.
Greene voted in favor of the FISA reauthorization, and other conservative lawmakers who voted against it did not entertain the notion of vacating Johnson’s speakership when asked by reporters.
Still, lawmakers and privacy-minded groups slammed the measure as a “one-sided” piece of legislation that benefited the US intelligence community — and even members of Congress — while ignoring the privacy concerns of American citizens.
“The failure of the rule is the result of the intelligence community’s approach to crafting one-sided legislation and calling it a ‘compromise,’” Gene Schaerr, general counsel for the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability, told The Post. “Perhaps this latest turn of events will convince the intelligence community to actually compromise. We can protect both our civil liberties and our homeland.”
“What we have for the average American to understand is a big pot of collected information that is, in the words of the Intel community, directed outward — that large pot of information is directed toward some 230,000″ foreign nationals abroad, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said in a floor debate ahead of the vote.
“But as I said earlier, we don’t know who they are, we’re not briefed on who they are — and when we try to go to that level of briefing, it has all been cloaked in the Intel world,” he explained. “You’ve got an intelligence-driven apparatus to collect information abroad that then will sweep in communications by American citizens or US persons into that database.”
“That is the problem.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) touted the FISA reform bill in a Tuesday hearing before the House Rules Committee — but opposed the inclusion of the Judiciary panel’s amendment.
He and Intelligence Committee ranking member Jim Himes (D-Conn.) still expressed openness to the possibility of a separate floor vote on that change.
Turner in the Tuesday hearing also stressed that Section 702 of FISA was not used “to spy on President Trump’s campaign” by surveilling his aide Carter Page in 2016.
“The provisions of the FISA court that we have reforms for, that actually their amendment does not relate to, would prevent the types of abuses that resulted in Carter Page having a warrant issued against him,” Turner said in an exchange with the libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
“I believe that they defrauded the court. The actual review of it has not resulted in anyone being found to have defrauded the court,” Turner explained.
“Our amendments tighten up the operations of the court so that this can never happen again,” he said. “We exclude from evidence any political opposition research; we exclude from evidence any news articles; we appoint an attorney for any US persons where a warrant application is before the court to review the application and advise the court; we require that every person that submit information as part of the investigation process certify under oath the material that they’re providing to the court.”
While acknowledging concerns from privacy hawks that the bill to reform FISA needed to also “safeguard Americans’ civil liberties,” 9/11 Families called on “Congress not to adopt any changes that would make the program unworkable operationally or that would deny law enforcement access to crucial intelligence.”
9/11 Families United also represents injured survivors and others sick or dying from illnesses related to the terror attacks orchestrated by al Qaeda.
However, not all 9/11 victims’ families were supportive. Kristen Breitweiser, the widow of Ronald Breitweiser and founder of Justice for 9/11, called on Congress and the US intelligence community to “stop using 9/11 as the pretext for surveillance.”
“The US government had all the information it needed in its possession to 100% prevent the 9/11 attacks from ever happening, and yet failed to do so leaving 3,000 dead and thousands injured from breathing known toxic air,” Breitweiser, who testified before Congress on the intelligence community failures related to the terror attacks, told The Post.
“If Congress wants to pass unconstitutional and unnecessary surveillance laws that trample the rights of Americans, they can choose to do so–but please do so without using the 3,000 dead on 9/11 as your pretense,” she added.
