A House intelligence committee-led (HPSCI) effort to reauthorize Section VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), including Section 702, is headed for a showdown on the House floor against privacy advocates Thursday afternoon, and the vote could be closer than Republican leaders previously expected.
After realizing there was a possibility the renewal bill could fail on the floor Wednesday afternoon, House GOP leadership urged the White House to weigh in on the debate. A White House statement late Wednesday night called for Republican lawmakers to vote against an amendment to enhance privacy protections sponsored by Michigan Republican Justin Amash, but that statement seemed to do little to move votes within the conference.
Amash’s amendment would replace the entire text of the HPSCI bill with that of the USA RIGHTS Act, a bill introduced by Rand Paul and Ron Wyden in the Senate and favored by a number of privacy groups. The legislation breaks from the intelligence committee’s bill and would require the government to obtain a warrant before searching 702-acquired data for information about Americans.
If the FISA reauthorization bill goes down Thursday, House intelligence committee leaders might blame a lack of involvement from Republican leadership.
Deputy Whip Tom Cole told TWS the whip team hadn’t weighed in to tell Republican members how to vote on the Amash amendment at all, and they don’t plan to. He said it was part of an agreement with privacy advocates that leadership would not whip against the Amash amendment.
“The intel committee has worked it on their own, but the whip team has not done anything at all,” he said.
Republican members may feel more free to support Amash’s amendment without explicit voting instructions from the whip team.
Is Nunes worried about the HPSCI-backed FISA bill having the requisite votes? “I’m not in the vote counting business,” he told TWS. He declined to comment on whether GOP leadership should have been more involved in advocating for the bill.
Exacerbating the issue, President Donald Trump tweeted conflicting messages about FISA reauthorization Thursday morning, first indicating he was in favor of enhanced privacy protections and suspicious of Obama-era surveillance abuses, and then following up on the tweet two hours later expressing his support for reauthorization.
HPSCI Republican Frank LoBiondo told TWS the president’s tweet would “negatively” influence the way Republicans vote. And Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), asked about whether the tweet would have an effect, answered, “I hope not.”
But Nunes, who has repeatedly raised concerns about improper ‘unmasking’ and surveillance abuses, played down concerns about Trump’s early-morning tweet attacking the FISA program.
“Well look, there’s a reason why we have DOJ and FBI under investigation for FISA abuse,” he said.
Nunes’ Democratic counterpart on the intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, raised concerns Thursday morning that Trump’s tweet would have an impact on the vote tally. He took to the House floor ahead of the vote and called for it to be delayed.
“In light of the significant concerns that have been raised by members of our caucus, and in light of the irresponsible and inherently contradictory messages coming out of the White House today, I would recommend that we withdraw consideration of the bill today to give us more time to address the privacy questions that have been raised,” he said.
It is unclear how Republican leaders would respond if the Amash amendment passes. Cole suggested that such a development, while hugely impactful for the intelligence community and the White House, would just be one step in the legislative process.
“If that’s what we end up with, it ought to go to the Senate and we’ll see what happens next,” he said Thursday morning.
