Republicans and Democrats clashed during a rare congressional hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as the reauthorization deadline for key surveillance powers looms.
The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday focused on a number of powers granted to the Justice Department, the FBI, and the National Security Agency under the USA Freedom Act in 2015 that are set to expire in December, hearing from witnesses from the DOJ, the FBI, and the NSA.
Republicans and Democrats generally seemed in agreement about the importance of empowering the agencies to monitor lone wolf terrorists and to conduct roving wiretaps on potential terrorists or foreign agents who might switch phones to evade detection, while both sides also expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s desire to permanently renew the NSA’s controversial phone call metadata collection program.
But the political parties were deeply divided on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the impending release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s FISA abuse report loomed in the background and as the DOJ watchdog testified in a separate hearing elsewhere in the building.
Although the secretive FISA court’s reauthorization is not in question this year, it featured prominently as Republicans on the panel pointed to the DOJ’s and FBI’s use of an unverified dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele at the behest of the opposition research Fusion GPS with funding from the Clinton campaign to authorize surveillance of a former Trump campaign associate Carter Page, while investigators concealed Steele’s flaws, biases, and Democratic benefactors from the court.
But Democrats defended the actions taken by the DOJ and the FBI during the Trump-Russia investigation.
Rep. Doug Collins, the Republican ranking member from Georgia, demonstrated the fine line that GOP members walked in supporting many of the government’s surveillance powers while criticizing what they saw as FISA abuses.
“It’s admittedly difficult to separate our concerns on FISA abuse from the reauthorization facing us, but we need to protect valuable tools in combating violent extremists and their evil goals,” Collins said.
Chairman Jerry Nadler dismissed allegations of FISA-related wrongdoing.
“I’m not aware of any terrible problem with the FISA court and specifically not with the Carter Page application,” said the New York Democrat.
Rep. Steve Cohen also defended the DOJ’s and FBI’s handling of the FISA court.
“It appears that some on the other side have got a problem with a lot of things that have gone on in law enforcement,” the Tennessee Democrat said. “I read all those FISA applications in the Carter Page and saw nothing wrong with any of them.”
Rep. John Ratcliffe, the Texas Republican who withdrew from consideration as the director of national intelligence earlier this year, said he disagreed.
“I’ll just leave it at the inspector general has written a report and we’ll see who’s right and we’ll see who’s wrong,” Ratcliffe said. “And I’m afraid, unfortunately, that the inspector general is going to find that folks on my side of the aisle are right that FISA procedures were abused and were not followed and will offer recommendations to correct that. But again, we’ll see.”
Horowitz’s report was handed over to the DOJ last week and is currently undergoing a classification review.
Republicans on the panel grilled the witnesses from the DOJ about FISA procedures too.
Collins asked Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Wiegmann if the DOJ and the FBI were required to present exculpatory evidence to the FISA court when applying for surveillance warrants.
“I believe we do provide the full picture in terms of what information is available when we’re applying,” Wiegmann said. “And we do disclosure in an ordinary course to the court the information that would suggest the person is a foreign agent and any evidence to the contrary. I do believe that is our practice.”
Collins pressed the DOJ official on whether not doing so would constitute a “failure” by the DOJ, but Wiegmann would only say, “It’s something that we don’t want to happen.”
